Thursday, we had a lot of visitors. We started by working in the cotton mill. We were making dishtowels and our job was to make sure the rose print was on each one. Here is the company logo...Mom, you should like this one.
There were so many rules. 
The assembly line worked well 
until they cut our wages and then laid off some workers! We were ready to sign the petition for a 10 hour work day and they blacklisted some of us! Later in the day, an actress gave a great performance of three different mill girls. One was telling all the benefits of being away from the farm and in the factory, another was Sarah Bagley (a blacklisted worker fighting for a 10 hour workday), and the last was an Irish girl trying desperately to make enough money to get the rest of her family to America. The actress was amazing and put on a great show. She really involved the audience and portrayed her characters well. It was obvious she had done a lot of research on each girl. She didn't allow photos...The mill is very dangerous...girls (mostly) are working at a feverish pace with little break time. The air in the factory is unhealthy and the girls are overworked. This is a replica of the Boott Mill where I am.
It has five floors...all run by the power of water wheels. This is what it really looks like. 
This is our director, Sheila.
Doesn't she look like Ellen DeGeneres? Really, Really she does. She even has the mannerisms of Ellen.
Today (Friday), we were off to look at interesting things. We got on the bus at 8:45 and headed to the cemetery. We stopped first to walk down this path to see the waterfall that helps power the Boott Mill and others. The path was thick with poison ivy and people were pointing it out all over. It was pretty scary....the ivy, not the falls.
At the cemetery, we were looking for the grave of Barilla Taylor. She was a mill girl who came to the mills to work at age 16. She was one of 12 children and her parents needed the money. She was the fourth oldest. Barilla died at age 17...probably of typhoid. We found the grave marker.
Here I am at the site of the ONB.
Our last stop was at Walden Pond.
This is the site of Henry David Thoreau (pronounced THOROUGH...or thorrrro -like "he did a Thorough job"). Most people pronounce it wrong. I did. Walden Pond is were Thoreau wrote WALDEN and and CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE to name a few things. He did his writing in a little cabin in the woods. It is really a little cabin. 
This is a model of the cabin and the next picture is of the actual place where the cabin was (deep in the woods).
He built it himself and lived mostly off the land. He lived there for 2 years, 2 months and 2 days. He surveyed this pond and found that at its deepest point it is 103 feet deep. When actual surveyors checked out the pond, they found out he was pretty correct.He wrote CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE when he was asked to pay a poll tax. He refused and was jailed. So, he is a role model for Gandhi and MKL, Jr.
When we returned to the model of his home, Mr. Thoreau was there. He took our questions and my question to him was "If you could sit down to a meal with the President, what would you say?" He informed me that he would never sit down with the President. He disliked the President and all politics. He was not to crazy about the women's movement either. He was pretty full of himself. 
At the site of his real house, people have left rocks. I found this one and it pretty much sums up my summer. Thanks for tagging along on my historical adventures.
told us that she shared all the duties with her husband except the preaching, marriages, and funerals. She was not ordained so she couldn't do them. She told us that her bedroom was completely out of style as it had a canopy bed and the walls were stenciled. That was soooooo 1800s. Wallpaper is "IN" now. 
She was an Irish immigrant who worked for the Towne family. She earned $5 and her husband earned $12. She was pleased with the wages.
Not a real one, but I got soaked. Many children were at a camp at Old Sturbridge Village. They were doing all kinds of neat activities. 
Victoria...you would really like this!! It involved a lot of manure and animals of all types.
We learned how to make cheese. It was so labor intensive and smelly.
We made yeast rolls, spice cake, butter, and whipped cream from scratch (no electricity!). We made a cabbage salad...it was cooked slightly and we made noodles with cheese. It was fun and a lot of work.
and headed over to one of the National Parks "educational" mills. There are these HUGE gears 
The river was really calm and pretty until we met up with another river!!!! and then it got just a little rocky. We were told to keep our hands in and don't touch the rocks...your hand will probably get crushed. Ouch!
He told us how the locks works (genius) to raise and lower the water level. He also told us about the floods of Lowell. If you look at the wall, you can see where the water crested in 1852 (carved in stone) and again in 1936 (painted on the wall). 
Fortunately, Mr. Francis had prepared a flood wall barrier (The Great Wall) and it saved the city twice. Until that first time, his barrier was called "Francis's Folly. He showed them, huh? When the big flood of 2006 came, they used steel bars instead of the wall because of its historical value. It worked well. Engineers learned a lot!
Lots of items were carried up the canal..here are the charges for each item. Most of the items were lumber-ish. They did haul manure too! Wouldn't you like to be on that boat ride?
I was with the lady from Kansas (how appropriate) and the lady from China (she came all the way from China for this workshop!) 
We got a real workout filling the tubs for each experiment.
