A Narrative about The Boott
Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts (1996) reports in prose effective and engaging the particulars of an excavation of mill life from approximately the 1830s to 1890s. Mrozowski, Zeusing, and Beaudry conducted excavations of a boardinghouse and agent’s abode for comparison. The mill town opened to house middle-class women in boardinghouses who were working in the mills. Their wages covered their board and this included three meals per day, the washing of bed linens, a bed, and few other amenities. The boardinghouses were under the purview of a boarder, usually an older woman, who ran the home and regulated the space/place according to the moral expectations of the mill owners. Towns like this were intentionally built to support the labor force that was employed at the mill and the houses in this area were specific to “unskilled” and skilled laborers bare necessities. Tenements were another form of housing available to laborers but these were suited to those with family and supervisors. This apartment-style living was less observed in this excavation as an agent’s home was the focus of comparison.
The backyards of these properties were ultimately the realm of the archaeologists’ work. There they accessed former privies, middens composed of animal remains, and took soil samples to record archaeobotanical evidence. Each source of data is a reflection and representation of the experiences of those who lived on and within these properties. The team also removed and recovered artifacts indicating ways in which people adorned themselves (jewelry, combs, buttons), consumed home goods (ceramics), and passed leisure time (pipe fragments and alcohol bottles). Hygiene and foodways were partially recorded in the documentary record and this evidence, along with the botanical and zoological, from the backyard confirms the diets of those in both types of housing. Primarily there was a reliance on the same kinds of meats, for instance, but the cuts from these animals differed dependent upon the socioeconomic relation of the house of study.
The period that these scholars address examines the shift in demographics as well. What begins as a place dependent upon the labor of middle-class young women (a matter in part of respectability politics) shifts to accommodate in time the arrival of immigrant families. This change in community composition is met with a shift in the responsibility of the mill owners to cultivate an otherwise safe and respectful working and living environment. City officials and boards would eventually determine that certain changes in infrastructure were necessary for the overall health and wellness of those living and laboring in the Boott, including the shift to water closets rather than outhouses. Sanitation concerns are along similar lines as privacy. Who was worthy of healthy and intimate living conditions was dependent upon status socioeconomic and intersectional of ethnicity and race.
The conditions in both boardinghouses and tenements lagged as the century and occupation of this landscape slunk on. The quarters became less and less comfortable for individuals and families alike. Corporate paternalism was the a dynamic feature of Lowell’s mill life and within the confines of the Boott expectations of care were met with less frequency. What originally was intended to be a place that sheltered laborers and encouraged moral living never really could live up to the hype. The rules that guided living on the Boott did not create a monoculture, and those who lived and worked therein continued to define their own style and subjectivities under regulation. The limitations of their income were not entirely precluding factors responsible for determining their consumption of goods.
From this text, I draw on a few objectives for my own work. Beaudry is an engaging writer and editor and her books and articles over the years demonstrate her aptitude for storytelling through evidence, data, and documentation. This is yet another example of how to write for the scholar and the layperson. Her hand is obvious in the construction of the text and encourages me to aim for this style or a similar tone in my own writing so that it is interesting to people outside this sphere. In addition, their use of botanical data seems impossible for me to avoid. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me a year ago, but the notion only dawned on me as I read this book and TAed for Martin Gallivan. Soil samples will help me understand concentrations of flax growth versus forest growth. Roe Valley is home to ancient growth forest, some of the last that remains in the county and beyond that nation of Northern Ireland. Understanding the soil is imperative to understanding the people and their influence on the landscape.
