Introduction

The American Industrial Revolution began in the Blackstone River Valley in 1793, when Samuel Slater established the first successful water-powered cotton factory in America. The Industrial Revolution in the area was made possible by the Blackstone River. It stretches 46 miles, from its source in Worcester, Massachusetts, all the way to the Narragansett Bay in Providence, Rhode Island. The river has a 438-foot drop from start to finish, with an average drop of 10 feet per mile, making it one of the most powerful bodies of water in the United States, and the ideal location for mills looking to leverage the force of the water to power their machinery in the early 19th century. Many such mills opened in Woonsocket.

Woonsocket is an American Indian word which has been subject to many interpretations. The most popular translation describes the name as being made up of two words: “Woone,” meaning “Thunder,” and “Suckete,” meaning “Mist”. Other historians feel the name is a derivation from another American Indian word meaning “place of steep descent,” referring to Woonsocket Hill which is located in North Smithfield.

Here in Woonsocket, the predominant immigrant group was French Canadian; therefore, the museum story is told through their experience. French-Canadian farmers and their families immigrated to the region to improve their standards of living. These new arrivals, along with successive generations, were fiercely committed to the preservation of their ancestral heritage. This desire led to competing impulses between the old and the new: between the importance of their unique cultural identity and their roles as workers in an increasingly class-divided industrial society.

It is estimated that close to 1,000,000 Québécois left the Province of Québec at the end of the 19th century to settle in New England. By the end of the 1920s, Woonsocket had truly become a city of immigrants. By then, more than 70% of the city’s population was described as French-Canadian. Indeed, it was described as “La ville la plus Française aux États-Unis,” or “the most French city in the United States.”

La Survivance is the name given by French inhabitants of Canada, and later the United States, to their fight for cultural survival: namely, maintaining their language, their faith, and their culture in a foreign land. In order to ensure their cultural heritage continued on in America, they spoke in their native language at home, built churches and schools, and organized ethnic associations.

Today economic change continues to remake the American workplace. Immigrants continue to come, and we continue to debate what it means to be “American.”