Visit to the Lowell Mills

On November 14th we went to the Lowell mills at the Tsongas Industrial Museum in Massachusetts. We took a long bus ride to get there. Once we got there we split into small groups and met our tour guides.

Each group got to take a tour of the hall that was full of things like the machine that picked the things from the cotton from the cotton mill. We learned how the slaves were forced to pick the cotton that was made into the nice clean fabric like we wear everyday.It was then shipped from the south to the north.

After that we got to weave.When we weaved we used a big loom and we could weave different patterns. Each student got weave on their own loom We learned that girls who worked in the mills worked a long time like fourteen hours a day.

We had lunch in a big cafeteria. Then we went on to a museum. It had a big replica of the floors of a factory mill. We split up into small groups for a scavenger hunt. Then we shared what we had learned with each other. After that we went on our last adventure for the the day: the boarding house. We split back into our little groups to go on another scavenger hunt. It was really cool and interesting that the mill workers got so much food and only thirty minutes to eat it. Their breakfast included pie, eggs, biscuits, bacon, sausages, soup and milk. It was amazing learning how different their life was than ours.
Now that we’re back at school we get to weave on our own classroom loom. I loved our field trip to Lowell and learning about the Industrial Revolution and Mill Life!

-Catherine