The Mile of Manufactories on the Merrimack at Manchester (In-person)

The Mile of Manufactories on the Merrimack at Manchester (In-person)

Spring (9 - 13 hours) | This course is completed

One Court Street Lebanon, NH 03766 United States
Room 3A - 3rd Flr - Suite 380
5/9/2024-6/13/2024
3:30 PM-5:30 PM EDT on Th
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$70.00

The Mile of Manufactories on the Merrimack at Manchester (In-person)

Spring (9 - 13 hours) | This course is completed

This is the in-person registration option for this HyFlex course.

The course charts the growth of the textile industry in Manchester, NH, from a single, wooden, cotton mill on the west bank of the Merrimack River at Amoskeag Falls to the magnificent red brick canyons of the mile-long Millyard on the east bank below the falls. It’s the story of how the original vision of one man—Samuel Blodgett of Derryfield, NH (Manchester, NH, since 1810)—was realized.

Inspired by the canals, cotton mills and other industries he saw in Manchester, England, Blodgett returned home in 1787 and declared “For as the country increases in population, we must have manufactories, and here at my canal will be a manufacturing town, the Manchester of America!” Blodgett died in 1807, long before that manufacturing town transpired, and even he might have been astonished by what the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company (AMC), and the other textile corporations swallowed whole by the AMC, created in “… the Manchester of America!”

The course also addresses the collapse of the AMC, how Manchester business and industry adapted to that near catastrophe, and how the historic Millyard changed as a result of 1960s zeal for urban renewal and the vision of modern entrepreneurs. The course will combine lectures with class discussion.

Picture: The bell tower of the former Manchester Mill No. 2 (completed 1850) framed by tenement blocks built in 1847-49 by the Manchester Mills Corporation for its workers. Photograph taken by Martin Jeffries, November 2023.


Jeffries, Martin
Martin Jeffries

Martin is an accidental geophysicist and polar scientist, and, since 2021, a member of Osher at Dartmouth and the Curriculum Committee. He has given Osher courses about the Arctic and Antarctica, the socio-economic history of the U.K. (Liverpool & Slavery, Manchester & Cotton), and the Amoskeag cotton and wool mills on the Merrimack River at Manchester, NH. Martin is retired, lives in West Lebanon, NH, and is the Chair of the Polar Research Board of the National Academies.