- Historical Eras > Antebellum America (1816-1860) (x)
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A Former Mill Girl Remembers the Lowell Strike of 1836 (with text supports)
Harriet Hanson Robinson began work in Lowell at the age of ten, later becoming an author and advocate of women's suffrage. In 1834 and 1836, the mill owners reduced wages, increased the pace of work, and raised the rent for the boardinghouses. The [...]
Young Women Ask Permission to Work in Lowell
Starting in the 1820s, a group of business owners built textile mills in New England, where for the first time, people could use machines to weave cotton into cloth. The first factories recruited women from rural New England as their labor force. [...]
Young Women Ask Permission to Work in Lowell (with text supports)
Starting in the 1820s, a group of business owners built textile mills in New England, where for the first time, people could use machines to weave cotton into cloth. The first factories recruited women from rural New England as their labor force. [...]
To Strike or Not to Strike worksheets
These worksheets help students plan their characters for the role play "To Strike or Not to Strikein 1830s Lowell." Also included is a rubric that students and teachers can use to evaluate the role play as it is performed.
Understanding the 1855 Census Database
This activity helps students navigate and make sense of the information available in the Five Points census database. In the activity, students use the database to test hypotheses about life and residents in the Five Points. For this activity, [...]
Slavery: Acts of Resistance
In this activity students compare an excerpt of a WPA interview with an ex-slave with a more famous statement by Frederick Douglass to arrive at their own interpretations of slave resistance. This lesson is designed to work with the film Doing As [...]
Running for Freedom: The Fugitive Slave Law and the Coming of the Civil War
This activity compares a runaway slave ad and an abolitionist poster to explore the causes and effects of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. The law changed how many northerners viewed slavery and intensified conflicts that brought the nation closer to [...]
"Troubles in the South-West": Ideology and the U.S.-Mexican War
In this lesson students read a series of documents about the American and Mexican reasons for and against the 1846 U.S.-Mexico War. As they read the documents students identify when the authors employ various foreign policy ideologies such as [...]
"Father Mathew" Teacup from Five Points
Uncovered during an archaeological dig of the former Five Points neighborhood, this teacup depicts the Irish temperance reformer Father Theobold Mathew, who during the late 1830s and 1840s convinced Irish on both sides of the Atlantic to embrace [...]
Map of the Five Points Neighborhood, 1855-67
In 1854 the names of the original streets, Cross, Anthony, Orange, and Little Water, which had formed the Five Points intersection (marked with a star) from which the neighborhood derived its name were changed to Park, Worth, Baxter and Mission [...]