Come and meet Lucy Larcom, nineteenth century textile mill worker, author, poet and teacher, at the Stephentown Historical Society meeting on Monday, September 8, at 7:30 pm. Phyllis Chapman will portray the Massachusetts girl who started working in a Lowell textile mill at age eleven and went on to become a poet, author and teacher. The meeting will be at the Stephentown Heritage Center on Garfield Road (County Route 26), Stephentown. The program is free and open to the public. The building is handicapped accessible. For directions or information, phone 518-733-0010.
Lucy Larcom was the second youngest of eight children whose widowed mother came to Lowell with her children to supervise a boarding house for mill workers. Lucy went to school at first but began working at the textile mill in 1837 to help support the family. Lucy represents the young Yankee women who worked 60 to 75 hours per week for the “highest pay available to women” at that time, from $1.85 to $3 per week. Lucy’s story is also the story of the industrial experiment, in which thousands of Yankee farm girls became skilled, if low paid, factory workers, that transformed the economic and physical landscape of southern New England.
In 1840 a group of female factory operatives, including Lucy and her sister, founded a magazine which carried poems, letters and fiction and was notable nationwide for being published by factory workers. Lucy had a poem in most every issue. In 1846 Lucy left Lowell, taught school, finished her education and eventually left teaching to write full time. Her 1889 book, A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory, is still in print today.
Phyllis Chapman has been portraying historic figures for 16 years, starting at the Bennington Museum. She was an art teacher for 21 years as well. She has a Master’s degree in Museum Education from Skidmore College.