Family researchers perplexed by the sudden disappearance of ancestors from Lancashire records should consider the possibility of migration to America. During the five decades between the end of the American Civil War and the outbreak of the First World War, tens of thousands of textile operatives and their families migrated from the cotton mill towns of Lancashire and neighbouring Cheshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire. They settled in the mill towns of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine and New Hampshire, where they received a warmer welcome from the native 'Yankees' than any other immigrant group, thanks to a common Anglo Saxon heritage. The burgeoning American cotton industry needed experienced mule frame spinners, loom fixers, weavers, carders, dyers and other highly skilled workers, and England was the only source. American mill agents operating in the English textile regions recruited thousands of operatives. Many more came to New England on the recommendation of relatives who had preceded them or with the assistance of craft unions and emigrant societies.

Families from Lancashire and other textile regions became a significant presence in the Blackstone River Valley of Rhode Island, in eastern Connecticut, and in the Massachusetts mill towns of Fall River, New Bedford, Lowell and Lawrence. By the end of the 19th century, English textile immigrants were making a strong mark on the culture and politics of their adopted homeland. In 1897, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Thomas B Read, spoke at a festival celebrating 50 years of cotton manufacturing in New Bedford. He paid special tribute to the contribution of English operatives and observed: Today, it is no uncommon thing for several members of a family to toil in the factories of Preston or Blackburn, while the rest of the family tend the looms and the spindles in the mills of New Bedford. He might have said the same about a dozen other New England textile communities, including Fall River, where many Rochdale, Oldham and Ashton families had settled, or Lawrence, where Bradford-born operatives worked in the woollen and worsted mills.

The American textile industry was literally built by immigrant English craftsmen Samuel Slater, a Derbyshire spinner, built the first American cotton mill utilising the Arkwright System. His water-powered factory, built in 1793 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, relied on English operatives, whose passage to New England was paid by Slater and his partners. A steady flow of English craftsmen during the first half of the 191 century hugely benefited the American industry by bringing with them - as Slater and William Crompton had done - a knowledge of advanced textile technology, machinery and mill design.

In later years, following the close of the American Civil War in 1865, the rate of emigration from England to New England increased dramatically. Migration was encouraged both by the wage cuts and labour unrest at home and the promise of steady work and high wages abroad. Agents of U.S. mills recruited operatives with needed skills on behalf of specific mills. These workers were given contracts stating wages and basic working conditions.

Contracts were not always honoured in good faith, and contract labour was outlawed by Congress in 1885. However, U.S. textile firms continued to publish advertisements in Lancashire-area newspapers. Another spur to migration - especially during downturns in the cotton trade - was the financial assistance provided by local emigration societies and craft unions. But the strongest inducement to cross the ocean was probably a letter from family already in New England with news of available jobs and a pledge to assist in the process of settling in the new country.

The introduction in the 1870s of large steamships operating between Liverpool and New York and Boston facilitated the migration. These huge ships, operated by Cunard, the White Star Line and other companies that catered to the emigrant trade, were faster, safer, more comfortable and less expensive than the sailing vessels they replaced. Fares in steerage class on the Liverpool to New York circuit were as low as £3.10.02 depending on the time of year and availability of space. Conditions in steerage were less than ideal, but rudimentary standards of safety, nutrition and medical care were required by a series of Passengers' Acts. The journey from the textile towns to Liverpool was short and inexpensive. And on the other side of the Atlantic, travellers were often greeted by agents of the British Emigrant Protective Society who assisted them in exchanging money and arranging the short trip to their final destination.

Some operatives came to the New World with their families, but others came alone and sent for their families only after securing a dependable job and suitable lodging. Many English settled in Rhode Island's Blackstone River Valley in a dozen mill communities stretching 30 miles from Providence north to Woonsocket. The 1910 census enumerated 53,727 persons living in the state who were either born in England or whose parents were both born in England. This represented 14.4 percent of the state's total population. Since the English were largely concentrated in a dozen factory towns, their numbers equated or exceeded both the native population and other immigrant nationalities. Several villages were populated largely by families from Lancashire. For example, the mill-owning Sayles family recruited so many English operatives that the town of Saylesville was essentially a Lancashire village in the heart of Rhode Island. Similarly, approximately half of the inhabitants of Lonsdale during the late 19th century were born in Lancashire. Home of the Lonsdale Mills - famous for fine goods such as sheeting, shirting and muslin - the town included two English churches, a cricket club and a Rochdale co-operative store.

Another favoured destination was Fall River, Massachusetts, on Rhode Island's border. The city's population quadrupled between 1870, and 1900 as the 'Spindle City' overtook Lowell to become the largest cotton-manufacturing centre in America - and second only to Manchester as a global 'cottonopolis'. In 1876, the city's 43 mills had more than one million spindles and 30,000 looms. By 1910 - the zenith of the city's cotton industry - there were more than 90 mills with 3.2 million spindles. The English population of Fall River - virtually all from the greater Lancashire area - grew steadily from 1865 to 1914, when the outbreak of war curtailed immigration and caused the English-born population to level-off. The 1920 census of Fall River showed an English-born population of 17,514 - 17.3 percent of the city's total population. The addition of children of English-born parents would have raised that percentage even higher, representing a strong Lancastrian presence in the city famous for its 'hills, mills and pork pies'.

Fall River's neighbour and sister city, New Bedford, Massachusetts, was also home to a thriving community of families from the Lancashire region. As the New Bedford textile industry grew, so did the city's English-born population to a point where it equated that of Fall River. And as elsewhere in New England, English-born operatives dominated the best-paid, most highly skilled positions in the mills and dominated craft union leadership. During the late 19th century, New Bedford's spinners union regularly ended its meetings by singing 'God Save the Queen'. In northern Massachusetts, the city of Lawrence (the 'Bradford of America') boasted the nation's largest wool and worsted industry and was home to many families from the West Riding of Yorkshire. In Lawrence's neighbouring city of Lowell, cotton was king, and operatives from Bolton and Farnworth were numerous. In its formative years, Lowell specialised in calico printing. and the city's print works imported skilled printers and engravers. One major employer built special housing for English calico printers. By 1910, approximately 10 percent of Lowell's total population of 94,969 consisted of persons born in England and their children. Lancashire operatives were present - but in fewer numbers - in the cotton industry's northern outposts of Manchester, New Hampshire and Lewiston and Brunswick, Maine.

English operatives also brought with them social institutions capable of sustaining a distinctive culture. Not the least of these was a tradition of craftsmen's solidarity and labour organisation. The American textile craft unions were organised by English immigrants, according to English principles and methods. In Fall River, for example, the five craft unions of mule frame spinners, weavers, carders, loom fixers and slasher tenders were all organised and led by English workers. The first secretary of the mule spinners union was Robert Howard of Stockport, who was succeeded by James Tansey of Rochdale. Most of the leadership remained in English hands well into the 20th century. During the New Bedford strike of 1928, the Textile Council, representing all unions, was led by Lancashire born loom fixer William Ewart Gladstone Batty. The leaders of the weavers (Abraham Binns), the spinners (Samuel Ross) and the carders (John Halliwell) were all born and trained in Lancashire. The first president of the United Textile Workers of America, John Golden, was a Blackburn native. English operatives demanded and received high wages for their skill, and they were the vanguard of the campaign for the 10-hour day, finally achieved in 1874. Principal leaders of the 10-hour campaign were George Gunton (from Rochdale), William Bower (from Stockport) and Richard Hinchcliffe (from Bradford). In the middle decades of the 19th century, American mill owners resented the assertiveness of their English employees, but the lack of skilled native workers forced management to continue to recruit operatives in greater Lancashire.

Friction between English-led craft unions and Yankee mill owners gave way to cautious co-operation in the last decades of the 19th and during the early 20th centuries. During the era stretching from the Fall River strike of 1878 to the New Bedford strike of 1928, English workers and their union leaders either opposed strikes or attempted to moderate worker demands and find common ground with management. This conservatism was spurred by the higher standards of living enjoyed by English immigrants. Skilled jobs translated into higher income and savings, better housing, and a more nutritious diet than other workers. In 1902, a reporter for the Manchester Guardian visited Fall River and New Bedford to research living conditions of Lancastrians in those cities. He had this conversation with a weaver from Darwen working in a Fall River mill:

Weaver: "This is the right side of the water."
Reporter: "Do you mean better to live in?"
Weaver: "No. Better for making money".

According to one study, mule frame spinners at the end of the 19th century earned an average of $13.50 per week in the United States, while their English counterparts earned the equivalent of $11-12. However, the wage differential may have been even greater. Another study, done by the British Board of Trade in 1911, concluded that wages in the U.S. were nearly twice those in England and Wales for common occupations present in all industrial cities.

Skilled English craftsmen dominated - even monoplized the best paid jobs in the mills largely because of their training and experience. Other ethnic groups resented this and charged that English-born overseers and supervisors favoured their own people. In 1881 at Fall River's Sagamore Mill, where the supervisor was Lancashire-born, 25 of the 32 best jobs were held by English. And in the city's Weetamoe Mill, also supervised by an Englishman, 29 of 32 mule frame spinners were English-born. Irish operatives accused the English of keeping them out of the trade of loom fixing. In 1902, a visiting journalist from the Manchester Guardian wrote: New Bedford is indebted to Lancashire for more than machinery. In nearly every mill, one finds Englishmen in responsible positions - sometimes in supreme charge. The English - dubbed 'labour’s aristocracy' - enjoyed a higher standard of living than other immigrant groups. But despite the high wages, working conditions were probably worse than at home in England. The work-day was consistently longer in New England by an hour or two, mules were operated at faster rates and weavers had more looms to tend. Perhaps as many as 15% of the total English population became disenchanted with the New World and returned home. Many others decided to remain British subjects - leaving open the option of returning home - rather than become naturalised U.S. citizens with the right to vote and hold public office.

Those immigrants who did become U.S. citizens largely supported the Republican Party for reasons that may have had less to do with ideology than with the fact that Irish Catholics dominated the Democratic Party in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This political allegiance took the form of many 'English Republican' clubs in textile communities such as the Albion Club in Lawrence, the British-American Republican Association in Sanford, Maine, the Victoria Club in Boston, and the Washington Club in New Bedford. In Lawrence's heavily English Ward 5, the Republican Party triumphed 36 out of 42 times between 1884 and 1912.

Like other immigrant nationalities, the Lancashire English brought to their new homeland a distinctive culture sustained by churches, co-operatives, fraternal orders, civic clubs, sporting leagues, philanthropic associations and other institutions. The religious life of New England's textile communities also reflected the Lancashire presence. Anglican English swelled the congregations of Episcopal Churches, while Primitive Methodism was introduced by English textile migrants. By the late 19th century, Fall River had four newly established Episcopal parishes and four recently organised Primitive Methodist parishes and six Methodist Episcopal congregations consisting almost exclusively of English-born workers and their families. Lowell had three Episcopal churches, three Methodist-Episcopal churches and two Primitive Methodist congregations, with thousands of active members. The mill villages of Rhode Island's Blackstone River Valley and the city of Providence had several dozen predominantly English Episcopal and Methodist churches.

The co-operative movement, planted in New England by English textile workers, disappeared by the 1930's. But at its height, nearly 30 Rochdale co-operative associations served 42 communities. The largest, with three stores and 3,500 members, was the Arlington Association of Lawrence. The Fall River co-operative was the city's largest retailer covering an entire block. Immigrants from greater Lancashire also brought to the New World the Ancient Order of Foresters - a benevolent society - and the fraternal Order of Odd Fellows. By 1889, the Odd Fellows boasted 29 'Manchester Unity' lodges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, all holding charters from the mother lodge in Lancashire. Equally popular was the 'Sons of St. George' and its auxiliary, the 'Daughters of St. George', with lodges in all the textile communities.

Other major English clubs included the British Empire Club of Providence, the English Social and Mutual Improvement Club of Lawrence, the British Club of Fall River and the Washington Club and Workingmen's Mutual Improvement Society of New Bedford. These organisations were a combination pub, reading room with English periodicals, and lecture hall.

They also served as the venue to plan banquets, picnics and parades to celebrate patriotic holidays, such as the monarch's birthday. Sports clubs also flourished. Cricket, Rugby and English football (soccer) were common in the mill communities. Fall River, alone, had 25 soccer clubs and a dozen cricket clubs, while Lowell and Lawrence were home to a popular Rugby league.

Many of these ethnic institutions declined or disappeared altogether during the 20th century as the English assimilated into the general American culture. The favourable economic status of English workers gave them a head start on entry into the middle class. While the great majority of immigrants started their life in the New World as textile workers, many took advantage of better opportunities in small business and non-mill managerial positions. As early as 1900, one half of English-born residents were employed outside of the mills. This process continued to a point where most English families had attained middle class income and educational status by the middle of the century. Consequently, they survived the decline of the New England textile industry and continued to prosper in their adopted homeland.

© Stuart B Hardy (11018) 162 Colonial Avenue, Tiverton, Rhode Island 02878 USA