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.