A New England Mill Girl

Some of the best moments in following the genealogy trail are when I discover a family connection to well-known historical events. Since these events are relevant to me, having learned about them in school, I already have a reference point. But isn’t it the smaller events, the ones that build to create larger movements, that have made the biggest impact on contemporary society? This is what I treasure about the saved letters I have from generations past. I can filter their history through my twenty-first century lens and gain insight from my family long passed.

Roxana Giles was a young woman of nineteen in May, 1827 when she left Charlemont, Massachusetts to work sixty miles away in a textile mill in Ware for three months. She was one of thousands of young women referred to as “mill girls” who came from rural New England towns to help usher in the industrial age. These women were known to be fiercely independent and dedicated workers, making up one of the largest gatherings of the time period of unaccompanied single women away from their homes.

Roxana was born in February of 1808 to Edward Giles and the former Roxana Loomis. She had four older half-siblings from Edward’s first marriage, and was the eldest of five from her own parents’ marriage. Her family was the epitome of a mill girl family: a rural New England farming family. From what I can glean from the many letters exchanged during the 1820s and early 1830s between Roxana and her family, it seems likely that while Roxana’s family could benefit from the money she earned, they didn’t require it. They were well-enough off. It seems that Roxana chose to work, and enjoyed the experience, gaining skills and developing social insights that she carried with her an entire lifetime.

Arriving in Ware in May of 1827, Roxana writes about boarding at Joseph Hartwells, then switching to board at Miss Woodwards. The mill girls lived in boarding houses in these mill towns, established just for the needs of the new female workforce. Roxana learned weaving in a woolen mill there. She wrote about the dangers the work entailed, reporting that a co-worker “got three of her fingers catcht in the cards last week and tore them very bad.” Despite the dangers, Roxana was proud of her new skills and earnings, writing to her younger sister Emily, “last week I wove 11 cut which amounts to a dollar and 20 [cent] beside my board.” All in all Roxana seemed content in her life. Maybe part of it was knowing it was temporary. Maybe it was the feeling of independence she had and the power that earning money gave her.

After three months in Ware in 1827, Emily presumably returned home to Charlemont. In 1829, she again ventured out, this time to North Adams, Massachusetts. It seems that at the time, before these young New England women were exploited, and before the immigrant workforce started to replace them, they actually had some say in what job they might work in the textile factories. Roxana wrote to her sister Emily that she was offered four shillings per week to work in the spinning room, but told the overseer that she could have “some looms” at the union factory. She was promptly offered five shilling for that week with the promise of “a pair of looms” the following Monday. Roxana asked for what she wanted and got it. Now that is inspiration to future generations.

The boarding conditions also still remained quite comfortable for the young women working in the factories in the late 1820s. Roxana writes that just after arriving in North Adams, she had contemplated moving to another boarding house so that she could stay with a friend, but they had no space. It all worked since she described “an excellent boarding place with Mr. Hall.” She slept in a chamber with just one other, whereas the place she almost switched to boarded eight women in a room.

Roxana was happy in North Adams and enjoying her independence. “I feel well contented. I have not seen one homesick moment since I left Charlemont.” She thought it a great privilege that she was able to go into the factory every day since she had arrived. And she was making money. “For three weeks past I have cleared 7 dol and 40 cents. Last week I made 2,80 besides my board.” She writes about purchasing levantine silk “for a frock” for “5 and 9 pence yd.” She explains it wasn’t the most expensive silk as she didn’t want to work the whole summer just to only have a frock.

For the rest of her life, Roxana Giles, later Roxana Field, worked for money. Not for others, but for herself. She took in sewing work, meticulously keeping an accounting of all her clients and earnings. Her thirteen-year-old daughter Emma, my great-grandmother, must have been so inspired by her mother’s ability to make money that she took up a few pages in the back of the same account book for her own earnings: “Jan 31st 1857 Gone two weeks without butter 4¢ a wk.—8¢.” At the end of three months, Emma had earned thirty-two cents for her endeavors. She must have felt empowered, as well, to have earned that money.

I am incredibly proud that I can witness through these letters a young woman in my family, in the 1820s, earning money, deciding what to do with that money, and making wise economic decisions on her own. Roxana is the earliest known working woman in my family. Every woman descended from her has also worked. Emma as a school teacher, her daughter Alice, my mother Olive, and myself, all teachers. Roxana is of my matrilineal line—the mother of my mother’s maternal grandmother. Much of what a daughter learns in her early life she has learned from her mother. I have a lot of gratitude for Roxana’s dedication to her work, her love of her family, and the lessons she is still teaching me.