Working in the mill

Nineteenth-century textile mills like the Bates Manufacturing Co. featured in your issue on Jan. 25 were sometimes home as well as the workplace for young women employed there.

A letter written in 1875 to my grandfather at Fort Gary, Manitoba, from a lady friend in East Florenceville, New Brunswick, says, in part, “Flo Dyer is in Boston now. Her address is Number One Stitching Room, Lawrence Corporation, Lowell, Mass. I had a letter from her not long since. She is doing well if what she says is true. She gets $26 a month besides her board.”

Merle Tyrrell

Houlton