LOWELL, Massachusetts (AP) -- The clanking sounds of a loom at the American Textile History Museum take visitors back to a time when clothes were hand-woven, and textiles drove the New England economy in this historic mill town and others.
"Textiles are such a basic part of everybody's life," said Diane L. Fagan Affleck, the museum's senior research associate. "And yet I think partly because of the technology that we have today, we just don't even think about where they came from or how they came to be."
My son’s grandmother was a ”mill girl”. When she was in her nineties you could watch her hands make weaving motions as she dozed in the afternoon. The museum is near the Lowell National Historic Park:
“The history of America's Industrial Revolution is commemorated in Lowell, Massachusetts. The Boott Cotton Mills Museum with its operating weave room of 88 power looms, "mill girl" boardinghouses, the Suffolk Mill Turbine Exhibit and guided tours tell the story of the transition from farm to factory, chronicle immigrant and labor history and trace industrial technology. The park includes textile mills, worker housing, 5.6 miles of canals, and 19th-century commercial buildings.”
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