People of Industry

The son of an immigrant, Moses Cone worked his way up from a traveling peddler to one of the nation's leading industrialists.

Kirk Boott took the chance to prove himself and made his mark by becoming the guiding hand that would transform a small farming village in New England into one of America’s first industrial cities. Both praised as a commanding leader and condemned as an autocrat, Kirk Boott wielded considerable power and influence over early Lowell.

Once a mill girl, she would go on to become a respected author writing about her experiences in Lowell.

Between 1837 and 1848, Sarah Bagley’s view of the world around her changed radically. While much of her life remains surrounded by questions, the record of Bagley’s experiences as a worker and activist in Lowell, Massachusetts reveals a remarkable spirit. Condemned by some as a rabble rouser and enemy of social order, many have celebrated her as a woman who fought against the confines of patriarchal industrial society on behalf of all her sisters in work and struggle.

George Mortimer Pullman was an American engineer and industrialist. He designed and manufactured the Pullman sleeping car and founded a company town, Pullman, for the workers who manufactured it. His Pullman Company also hired African-American men to staff the Pullman cars, who became known and widely respected as Pullman porters, providing elite service.

Jennie Curtis, who was a seamstress in the repair shops, one of the most common jobs at the Pullman car shops for women. Curtis is significant not just because of the testimony she gave to the Strike Commission but because she was the president of The Girls Local Union 269, which had 125 members in 1894. Curtis famously gave a speech at the ARU convention of June 1894 that convinced the union members to support a boycott of Pullman trains to support the strike effort.

Oliver Evans, famed inventor and mechanical genius. He developed technologies which helped to make the Brandywine Valley and northern Delaware a major center for the early Industrial Revolution in the United States.

Clara Lemlich Shavelson was a union organizer, suffrage activist, and Communist Party organizer.

Robert Lee Villines was the original owner and operator of the Villines Grist Mill, located in today's Boxley Valley Historic District. Upon the death of his father-in-law, Samuel Whiteley, who operated a small grist mill prior to the Civil War, Robert began the arduous process of gaining title to the land to build a new, larger mill. The Villines Grist Mill opened in 1870 and remained in operation for more than 80 years, serving the Boxley Valley community.

Founded the Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company in 1878. C. B. Dempster knew selling windmills to farmers was a prosperous and growing industry. Farmers needed water and the Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company could supply the equipment. The business expanded into farm machinery in 1897. C. B. Dempster ran the company until his death in 1933.