Teacher's Guide to Industrial
History Electronic Library
This collection of primary source materials is a
beginning library for the study of industrial history in
19th century Massachusetts. The primary sources included
to-date are mainly of Fall River during the 19th century
heyday of economic activity in the textile industry.
Selected images are also included from Lowell, Waltham,
Lawrence, Lynn, Boston, Chicopee, Holyoke, Worcester and
Springfield. Fall River is offered as a case study to show
the variety of primary materials that can be used to do
original research on industrial history, a topic included in
the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks.
While your community or region may not have been an
industrial center of the size and activity of Fall River or
these other cities, the same kinds of sources can be sought
to tell the story of your community and its economic changes
during the 19th century. Comparisons can be made in the
patterns and extent of growth in your community with these
cities, as well as with the way your community has evolved
economically until today.
What are Primary Sources?: Types of original
resource materials include:
Official Records:
federal - census, military, and court records,
legislation, agency reports
state - census, state military, and vital records,
agency reports, petitions, legislation, court records
county - probate, deeds, court records
municipality - tax valuations, town meetings, local
census and militia records, voter lists
Personal Records: papers, diaries, family records,
letters, etc.
Printed Materials: newspapers, directories,
handbills, genealogies, etc.
Oral Histories: interviews, tapes,
transcriptions
Material Culture: property such as artifacts,
furniture, clothing, gravestones, and real estate; landmarks
and landforms.
Images: illustrations, maps, drawings, portraits,
engravings, photographs, etc.
Sources of Primary Materials:
This project has worked in collaboration with the Center
for Computer-Based Instructional Materials of the University
of Mass. Amherst. The CCBIT and the History Department at
UMA have developed innovative materials on the City of Fall
River in connection with their web-based course on Lizzie
Borden and Fall River. We include several of their primary
sources in this database library but many more are contained
in their website.
The locations of original materials used in this library
to-date include: Fall River Historical Society (courtesy
Jamelle Lyons, Archivist), Fall River Historical Society
materials reprinted in Victorian Vistas: Fall River
(permission of FRHS and author Philip T. Silvia, Jr.),
Lowell National Historical Park, National Park Service
(courtesy Mark Bogren former curator and Jo August Hills,
Librarian, Tsongas Industrial History Museum, Lowell,
Historical Atlas of Mass., (permission of Univ. of
Mass. Press), Engines of Change (permission of
Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American
History), Lowell Mill Girls (Permission of Joanne
Deitch, Discovery Enterprises Ltd.), Pioneer Valley
(permission of author Guy McLain and Connecticut Valley
Historical Museum), Waltham Historical Society (Courtesy,
Joan Sheridan, President), and Massachusetts State Archives
(courtesy Maxine Trost, Curator).
To localize this study, you may want to search for
primary source materials on your community or region: These
repositories are suggested:
Federal: National Archives and Records
Administration, National Guard - Massachusetts Military
Division, Library of Congress online
State: Massachusetts Archives, State Library,
Mass. Historical Commission (national register properties,
eg.), Mass. Historical Society, American Antiquarian
Society, New England Historical Genealogical Society
County: Court Houses, Registries of Deeds
Municipality: City or Town Hall: Local Historical
Society, Local Historical District, local museums
Other helpful primary and secondary sources on industrial
history and Fall River are found in the Industrial
History Bibliography. For a listing of Massachusetts
repositories from the Historical Records Repository Survey,
contact the Mass.
Historic Records Advisory Board website. Contact the
Mass. Board of Library
Commissioners website for a listing of public and member
libraries. Libraries are often a good repository of data on
your community or region and the first place to start with
secondary sources. They can lead you to the locations of
other primary source repositories for your community.
How to Use This Library: When you click on the
industrial history library, the titles of primary materials
in our electronic library will come on the screen as a
summary list. To view the database form and image for any
title on this list, click on its number and the form will
appear. You can see a thumbnail sketch of the image. To view
the full image on the screen, click on the thumbnail, and
print it out if desired. If students use primary sources
from this library, they should cite the source.
The database forms contain information on source name,
repository address and contact name as well as a description
of the primary material where available. The major subjects
and standard(s) involved are listed, but you may have
students relate to others as well. Additional research on
the primary material or the larger subject can be done at
the repository for this material as well as other locations
and websites in the bibliography. Students should remember
to give credit to the sources used in any report, whether
they are taken from this library, directly from the web, or
from other sources. They can learn about copyright laws and
how to obtain permission where necessary.
Why Use Primary Sources? The Library of Congress's
excellent website includes many primary sources including
important US documents and photographic collections. They
also include a
learning page for teachers which cites two reasons for
using primary sources:
1. Primary sources expose students to multiple
perspectives on great issues of the past and present.
History, after all, deals with matters that were furiously
debated by the participants. Interpretations of the past are
furiously debated as well, among historicans, policy makers,
politicians, and ordinary citizens. By working with primary
sources, students can become involved in these debates.
2. Primary sources help students develop knowledge,
skills, and analytical abilities. By dealing directly with
primary sources, students engage in asking questions,
thinking critically, making intelligent inferences, and
developing reasoned explanations and interpretations of
events and issues in the past and present.
Developing a lesson around primary sources can
mean a single activity, a team project or a unit. Whatever
its format, the Department of Education recommends these
lesson components be included: the topic or essential
question; standards covered (e.g. history and social science
and other disciplines); tasks and activities; products and
performances; assessment (basis and criteria for
assessments); scoring rubrics, etc. for assessments; and
education technology connections. It is also helpful to
suggest how to extend your lesson (or unit). The DOE
recommends checking out the more detailed lesson format
described in CLASP
website (Curriculum Library Alignment and Sharing
Program). Contact your district office for sample exemplary
lessons related to the standards. See also the new lesson
plan sharing feature on the MassCUE
website (Massachusetts Computer Using Educators).
Curriculum Standards: Industrial history materials
can be used to meet standards in several disciplines: for
example, History & Social Science (History, Geography,
Economics), Science (Humans, Society & Technology), Math
(Patterns, Statistics), English Language Arts (Literature,
Oral History). This project focuses on two core knowledge
topics in American History for Grade Spans 5-8 and 9-12.
1) The United States: Expansion, Reform and Economic
Growth (1800-1861). The subtopics emphasized are
Industrialization in New England and Early immigration.
2) The United States: The Advent of Modern America
(1865-1920). Subtopics highlighted include: Industrial
expansion; Organizing 19th century labor; New immigration;
and the Role of Women.
There are six major History standards. Those
emphasized are: 2. Historical understanding; 3. Research,
Evidence and Point of View and 6. Interdisciplinary
Learning: Natural Science, Mathematics, and Technology in
History. The other three standards will be relevant but of
lesser emphasis: 1. Chronology and cause; 4. Society,
Diversity, Commonality, and the Individual and
5.Interdisciplinary Learning: Religion, Ethics, Philosophy,
and Literature in History.
Geography: Places and Regions standards will
involve gaining a sense of place and region through an
understanding of the effects of geography on historical
events, cultures and key people who were shaped by their
environment. Spaces of the World standards include an
understanding of historical maps and how their comparison by
date and feature helps to explain historical context. Human
Alteration of Environments standards cover the analysis of
impact of people and technology on the land, especially
environmental changes caused by rapid urbanization.
Economics: U.S. and Massachusetts economic history
is covered. There are also several fundamental economic
concepts that can be explored that changed the United States
from an agrarian to an industrial and commercial nation.,
i.e. entrepreneurship and ownership, products and market,
and recruitment and treatment of workers.
Science strands: Science, Technology, and Human
Affairs is emphasized, and the project also includes the
Earth and Physical Sciences, and Engineering Technology.
Math: The strands for Patterns, Relations, and
Functions as well as Statistics and Probability are
covered.
Language Arts: The Language and Literature strands
are emphasized, and the Media Strand can become important if
a computer-based project develops using the electronic
library as a base.
What skills are developed? According to the state
Curriculum Frameworks for History and Social Science,
primary source use can develop these skills:
Historical Understanding Standards: students will use
research and analytical skills to understand the context of
history by studying different primary sources for the
period. They will understand the contingency and
unpredictability of history, and how events might have
turned out differently.
Research, evidence and point of view standards develop
the skills of collecting, evaluating and employing
information from primary and secondary sources, and of
applying it in presentations. Students will understand and
use the many kinds and uses of historical evidence; and by
comparing competing narratives, they will differentiate
historical fact from historical interpretation and from
fiction. They will learn how to clarify and evaluate
reliability of specific primary sources and recognize points
of view and bias.
While this highlights feature focusses on the History and
Social Science skills, primary sources can be used across
the curriculum. The skills for interdisciplinary Science,
Math & Technology as well as Language Arts are not
included here, but check out their Frameworks for
significant skills developed in these disciplines through
research, analysis and presentation. In general inquiry and
decision-making skills apply to all subjects when a lesson
or project is developed that involves critical thinking and
higher level skills.
Some lesson topics to consider related to the curriculum
standards:
- Movement from farm to factory and economic reasons
for movement;
- Use of water power for industrial use and the effect
of new dams on farming;
- Transportation changes, from building canals to
building railroads;
- Mills and the development of the factory system;
- Machinery and inventions;
- Labor conditions, mill women, child labor, the union
movement, labor laws;
- Immigration, treatment of ethnic groups, and their
contributions;
- Growth of cities, and the built environment;
- Religious disestablishment (Puritan church) and
spread of religious diversity.
- Health problems, pollution in housing and work
areas.
- Social problems and the rise of government
institutions;
- Education, literary movements and public
libraries;
- Reform efforts.
Examples of primary sources in this library include:
Board of Health listing of causes of death (see cholera
etc., infant diseases, etc.); State inquries from Bureau of
Labor Statistics; replies of city Board of Trade to critical
report from this Bureau report; pictures of mills and mill
owners showing economic success of new breed of
entrepreneur; birth of public library system; mill girls
ground-breaking work in factories, their boarding houses and
their literary, cultural pursuit; mill regulations and
attempts to secure 10-hr day, Millowner and labor leader
portraits.
Each illustration or document tells a story but leads to
questions as well. In some cases, only one page or the cover
of a report will be included, but students will have
information for locating the full report as the next step.
Students can supplement the textbook or other secondary
source by becoming historians using primary sources and
critical thinking to seek answers to questions to get a more
complete story.
Your classroom research projects: Please send us
your primary sources and lessons to share with other schools
and enlarge this library. If you have already scanned
primary materials, please send a copy of your scans which
will save us time and effort. We will copy them into the
Library and tie them into the database (if the materials are
appropriate) and return your floppy or zip disk. Include
data on title of material, source, and any specific
standards this material addresses to be included on the
database form. Our email address is
k12.msp@umb.edu. Mailing address is Massachusetts
Studies Project, Institute for Learning and Teaching,
Graduate College of Education, University of Mass. Boston,
Boston, MA 02125.
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