Пост индустриальный

 [by Fred Lynch in Rhode Island]

From my Ancestry & Immigration Series:

The Lonsdale Company (1831 – 1946) built this big red brick house in 1888. It is identical to the one next to it, and to the others running up Blackstone Street in Cumberland, Rhode Island. This was a row of “Overseers” houses, built for executives of the Londale Company which ran a group of big mills along the Blackstone River. Behind these houses is a row of similar but smaller houses for laborers. Down the street is an entire neighborhood of small workers houses – all identical, and all in neat rows. They are all part of Lonsdale Village which spreads across the Blackstone River into two towns: Cumberland and Lincoln. In 1935 my grandparents bought half of this Overseers house from the company as it was slowly closing down. The textile industry that had shaped so much of New England in its Industrial Revolution was moving south, leaving behind this entire village and many others in the region. The mills brought jobs and immigrant labor to the area. It also left behind some problems. My father recalls walking along the river as a boy and seeing the different colors of the water from dumped dyes. One day yellow, another day red. No one ever swam or fished in the Blackstone River. Now Lonsdale is an historic district, with clean-up and preservation promotions. 

John and Edna Lynch (the children of immigrants) moved their growing family here from Pawtucket and they lived the rest of their long lives there. This is where my father grew up, and where I spend many cold Christmas afternoons rolling down the tiny hill (which is gone now – carved out for a driveway) with my brothers and many cousins. By the end of the holiday, the hand-knit mittens which we were given each Christmas by our grandmother had begun to fall apart.