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Westborough Local History Pastimes – For the Week of April 13, 2020

pas·time – /ˈpasˌtīm/ – noun

  1. an activity that someone does regularly for enjoyment rather than work; a hobby. “his favorite pastimes were shooting and golf [and local history!]” (Source: Lexico – https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/pastime)

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I often compare the value of local history to the experience of drinking fine wine. 

Better wines offer a variety of taste sensations and a depth of flavor over the course of one sip that other wines may not possess. In the end, though, the enjoyment of fine wine really comes down to the mindset we bring to drinking it: are we paying attention to the way it smells in the glass, its texture, the changes of flavor as we sip it both on its own and as we eat food? No matter how fine the wine, if we guzzle it down like water we will certainly miss its subtleties. But if we slow down and apply a more mindful approach to the wine that we drink (or the food that we eat), we gain more enjoyment from the experience.

The same principle applies to local history. The more we strive to learn about the history of our town, the greater the enjoyment of where we live. The Arcade Building is simply one of many buildings that line the Westborough rotary–until we learn that it was the site of the town’s second meeting house, which was then sold and turned into a shopping arcade before being replaced by the present structure. And the Town Hall is just a place where we pay our taxes, renew our dog licenses, and attend Selectmen’s meetings–until we learn that it needed to be built once the second meeting house was no longer available and that the current structure is actually the second town hall to inhabit that spot.

Local history offers us a “depth of flavor” that enhances the appreciation of our daily surroundings by helping us see the layers of time that have gone into making our town what it is today. Now that the weather is warming, why not take advantage of the “Early Development of Westborough through Church and State: A Walking Tour” (one of the Westborough Local History Pastimes listed below) and add some new “flavors” to your enjoyment of Westborough?!

–Anthony Vaver, Local History Librarian

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If you grew up in Westborough during the 1950’s, did you and your family move here during that time? If so, from where, and why did you move here? If your family lived in Westborough before 1950, what did your parents do for work? Why did your family decide to stay in Westborough?

If you live in Westborough today, did you grow up here? If so, why did you decide to stay (or move back)? If you moved to Westborough, where did you move from? Why did you choose to live in Westborough?

Click here and help us tell the story of Westborough?

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Just make sure that while you follow the tour on your phone that you maintain proper social distancing!

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  • Play some historical video games – The Internet Archive offers a wealth of public domain books, videos, audio files, and other free resources. It even has historical video games!

While your kids play games on their phones or on their Nintendo Switch, you can wax nostalgic by playing their early forebears, such as The Oregon Trail, Sim City, or Prince of Persia. The link above takes you to a list of games that can be played through your browser, but the “Software” navigation button at the top of the Internet Archive page can take you to other game forms (although some might require more advanced computer knowledge to operate).

As I try out some of these games I think about the truth of the old adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”: it turns out that I’m still really bad at playing Pac-Man!

Westborough Local History Pastimes – For the Week of April 6, 2020

pas·time – /ˈpasˌtīm/ – noun

  • an activity that someone does regularly for enjoyment rather than work; a hobby. “his favorite pastimes were shooting and golf [and local history!]” (Source: Lexico – https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/pastime)

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We often live out our daily lives unaware that in doing so we are necessarily participating in the process of creating history. By repeating everyday tasks, we reinforce modes and patterns of existence that define who we are, both individually and as a society. And because we take these actions for granted, gaining a true understanding of the “how and why” of what we do on an everyday basis poses the greatest challenge for historians, precisely because we leave behind so few reflections on the mundane routines that structure most of our lives.

But every now and then, our lives are disrupted by a big event that brings to relief how we collectively experience and participate in the creation of history. We tend to think of wars in this way (although recent wars have not engendered the same kind of social call that World War I or World War II did). Extreme economic events, such as the onset of the Great Depression, also jolt us from our historically reflective slumber. And the library’s archive of historical photographs are filled with images of disasters such as blizzards, the aftermaths of tornadoes and hurricanes, and major fires (while we have a dearth of pictures depicting everyday life from various eras). 

When it comes to pandemics, we have to look back to the “Spanish Flu” of 1918 as the last time that this form of historically reflective disruption took place in the United States at the scale we are experiencing now.* The long span in time between then and now may have lulled us into a false sense of security, but history tells us that plagues are a part of human experience and have been from our beginnings. While our medical technologies might be able to mitigate their effects or extend the time between their occurrence, we cannot avoid them altogether. Whether we like it or not, coping with pandemics are a part of what it means to be human. We may not gain great comfort from this observation, but as I am holed up in my house with my family I think about all the times that people have been forced to do the same throughout history, and I suddenly realize that my experience is not unique, that I am not alone. And I now have better insight into what those people experienced and can gain lessons from how they coped.

Please take some time during this quarantine period to tell us about the aspects of daily life in Westborough that historians find so challenging to discover (see the first Historical Pastime entry below). I will be asking you to contribute similar reflections over the upcoming weeks.

–Anthony Vaver, Local History Librarian

* By the way, I did a thorough search in the Westborough Chronicle for any mention of the Spanish flu and could not find any.

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Aerial View of Rt. 9 and Woodman Ave., ca. 1950’s

Last week, the Westborough History Working Group asked you to contribute reflections on how the aftermath of WWII and the Korean War affected daily life as part of its Westborough in the 1950’s Project. This week we are asking you to tell us your memories about the farms, orchards, dairies, and greenhouses in Westborough, both in the 1950’s and today. 

Was agriculture important to daily life in Westborough in the 1950’s? Did you ever get the chance to enjoy Westborough-produced food? Did your family have a garden?

For those of you who did not live in Westborough in the 1950’s, how do you take advantage of the farms and greenhouses in Westborough today? Now that spring is here, what produce do you look forward to eating most? Do you tend a garden or are thinking of starting one, given our quarantine situation? 

Click here to contribute your memories and reflections on Westborough agriculture and your anticipations for the upcoming growing season.

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Rev. Ebenezer Parkman
  • Learn about Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, Westborough’s first minister. While Rev. Ebenezer Parkman served as Westborough’s minister from 1724 and 1782, he kept a detailed diary of his life and his interactions with other people. This extraordinary resource gives us a profound and unprecedented insight into colonial life in a rural New England town. The Ebenezer Parkman Project, a creation of the Westborough Public Library, offers access to Parkman’s complete diary and other writings, along with information about colonial Westborough and its inhabitants.

Did you also know that Ebenezer Parkman is buried in Memorial Cemetery across from Town Hall? (Walk down the middle sidewalk behind the fountain and it’s hard to miss.) Visiting his gravesite (and the other old gravestones that surround his) can offer a welcome diversion and excuse to get out and take a walk.

* * *

  • Brush up on your Civics while playing games. The iCivics website, the brainchild of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, uses online games to teach civics in an engaging way. The 21 games on the site are geared to kids and adults alike and cover various topics, such as Branches of Power (“Learn to control all three branches of the U.S. government!”), Do I Have a Right? (“Run a law firm and test your knowledge of constitutional rights”), and People’s Pie (“Learn to control the budget of the federal government”). Sounds like powerful stuff!  

Government can at times seem like an independent entity that works against us, when in reality we, as U.S. citizens, own it and have the ability to make it work in our favor. The more we learn about how our government functions, the more influence we can have on how it operates. Acquiring this knowledge is one of our main duties as citizens, and what better way to learn to amplify our democratic voice than to play games?!

Westborough Local History Pastimes – For the Week of March 30, 2020

pas·time – /ˈpasˌtīm/ – noun

  • an activity that someone does regularly for enjoyment rather than work; a hobby. “his favorite pastimes were shooting and golf [and local history!]” (Source: Lexico – https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/pastime)

* * *

Historically, when human beings have time on their hands, they tell stories. (See my last blog post where I discuss Boccaccio’s The Decameron.) The first local history pastime on my list below asks us to tell the story of how two big events, the aftermath of World War II and the Korean War, shaped daily life in the 1950’s. 

Time will tell how our experience with the coronavirus will shape our future, but I hope that any of you who lived during the 1950’s–or have an interest in this topic or time period–will take the time to share your memories or share your research on this topic and help us tell our story about what it was like to live in the 1950’s.

–Anthony Vaver, Local History Librarian

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Westborough Korean War Monument
  • Westborough in the 1950’s Project. The Westborough History Working Group at the Westborough Public Library is teaming up with Westborough TV to create programming and an eventual film on Westborough in the 1950’s, and we need your help. Over the next few months, we will be gathering from the Westborough community photographs, memories, images of ephemera, and other information about what it was like to live in Westborough during this formative decade.

This week we are asking the question: How did the aftermath of World War II and the Korean War affect life in the 1950’s, either in Westborough or American society in general? 

Whether you lived in Westborough during this time or not, submit your reflections by clicking here. If you were not alive during the 1950’s or were too young to remember, then perhaps you can use this question to interview someone who did or do some research to try to answer the question a different way.

In the coming weeks, I will be asking more questions about daily life in the 1950’s and pose other ways for you to contribute content to our 1950’s project.

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  • Research your ancestors (or other historical person). Until April 30, you can use Ancestry.com from home (normally, you have to be in the Westborough Library to use this database). Every time I search this database, I discover something new about my ancestors, so if you have never used it or haven’t searched the database in awhile, you will be amazed by the resources that it offers.

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List of Males over 16 Years Old, 1777
  • Early Census Record. I recently received my U.S. Census form in the mail and filled it out online this weekend. Once you have submitted your form, take a look at an early Westborough census record: List of Males Over 16 Years Old, 1777. This census was used to determine and identify the number of soldiers that Westborough was required to send to fight for the American cause during the American Revolution.

By the way, your participation in the U.S. Census is important not only for its use in developing public policy and for allocating resources to our state and town, but also because it will provide key information for your descendants, who at a future date may be using Ancestry.com or some other resource to discover information about you.

Westborough Local History Pastimes

Pass Time with Our Passed Time During the Week of March 23, 2020

pas·time – /ˈpasˌtīm/ – noun

  1. an activity that someone does regularly for enjoyment rather than work; a hobby. “his favorite pastimes were shooting and golf [and local history!]” (Source: Lexico – https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/pastime)

* * *

With so much time on our hands due to the quarantine, why not pass it with some Westborough local history?

With the closure of the Westborough Public Library due to the spread of the corona-virus, I will be sending out weekly suggestions for how you might want to engage your mind with local history activities. Here are a few resources to explore. Have fun!

–Anthony Vaver, Local History Librarian

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Westborough Chronotype, August 27, 1915

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Copy of the Declaration of Independence, Westborough Town Records, 1776

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And if you really have a lot of time on your hands . . . how about something completely different?

  • The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio – I know, it’s not local history, but it’s timely (and historical). The frame narrative around Boccaccio’s 14th-century collection of stories involves a group of ten, young nobles retreating to the country for ten days to avoid the Black Death. To pass the time, each member of the party is required to tell a story every day for a total of 100 stories.

As I read Boccaccio’s work, I can’t help but think about how it can be updated to the present. The cloistering of the youths brings to mind reality television shows such as Big Brother, and I wonder if my college daughters’ daily TikTok creations (click on the link if you have no idea what I am talking about) can be gathered together for similar effect once we come out the other end of our quarantine. So far, I am only one story into the narrative collection, but the satire is devastating and can perhaps be applied to some of our leaders in the midst of this crisis. Even though the introductory frame paints a grim picture of the plague’s effects, I find that it puts our situation today in comforting perspective while at the same time creating an eerie backdrop that forces us to face questions about our human condition as we read about the protagonists’ lighthearted approach toward escaping their horrific circumstance.

The version linked above is from the Internet Archive (which itself provides a platform for hours of fun exploration) and can be read directly online or downloaded in a variety of formats so that you can read it offline on a tablet or other reading device. (Scroll down and look to the right of the catalog information to see a list of available formats.) Other versions and translations of The Decameron are also available through the Internet Archive, but so far I have found this one to use language most similar to ours today.

Maybe after reading Boccaccio you will be inspired to take up the challenge yourself and write a story a day during this stretch of time. If so, send them my way (avaver@cwmars.org) and maybe I will publish them in future editions of Westborough Local History Pastimes.

The Fight for Women’s Suffrage in Westborough: An Online Exhibit

Women won the right to vote in elections across the United States in 1920, but the fight for women’s suffrage was drawn out over many years before then.

The issue of women’s suffrage first appeared in a Westborough newspaper on November 16, 1867, and arguments both for and against women’s suffrage were published off and on in the Westborough Chronotype up until women finally won the right to vote.

The first mention of women’s suffrage in a Westborough newspaper: Saturday Evening Chronotype and Weekly Review, November 16, 1867.

When it came to women’s suffrage, Massachusetts and other Eastern states lagged far behind Western states, where women earned full voting rights in local and state elections years before those in the East did. When women in Massachusetts finally earned the right to vote in 1892, they could do so only for candidates running for school committee.

Three women became the first to vote in a Westborough election after winning that right in 1892:

  • Abbie M. Fay of Ruggles St.
  • A. B. Harvey of South St.
  • Esther M. Howell of Cross St. (Source: a handwritten “true copy” note by E. E. Dunlap, Clerk Assessors added to the library’s copy of the 1892 Westborough Assessors report, p. 40).

Given the limited voting power that they received, few women exercised their right to vote in Massachusetts during this interim period, so the fight for women’s suffrage continued.

Debates in the Westborough Chronicle

Proposed Meeting Warrant

Beginning in 1880, the women’s movement in Massachusetts lobbied for the right to vote in municipal elections by seeking to include petitions in town meetings that encouraged the Massachusetts Legislature to grant women the right to hold town offices and vote in town affairs. Most of these petitions were rejected by voters.

One such attempt seems to have occurred in Westborough.

Westborough Chronotype, March 17, 1883

Note: No article regarding Women’s Suffrage appears in the Westborough Town Records for the March town meeting in 1883.

Woman Suffrage Convention in Westborough

The Massachusetts Women’s Suffrage Association was founded in 1870 by suffrage activists Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Stone, and Henry Browne Blackwell, among others, and was active up until 1919. In 1884, Westborough held a convention as part of a series of programs across the state that were sponsored by the association.

Phoebe Couzins, the featured speaker, was one of the first female lawyers in the United States, and at the time she was engaged in traveling across the country lecturing on women’s suffrage. Later that same year, she testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on the legal status of women.

Phoebe Couzins (Published in History of Women’s Suffrage by Susan B. Anthony, et. al, Rochester, NY – https://archive.org/details/historyofwomansu03stanuoft; Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19172989.)
Westborough Chronotype, January 12, 1884
Advertisement for the National Woman Suffrage Convention in Westborough, 1884 (Kristina Allen Papers, LH.032).

The Chronotype covered the activities of the convention in detail.

Description of the convention and Phoebe Couzins’s lecture. Westborough Chronotype, January 19, 1884

One Westborough suffragist objected to the coverage of the convention in the Chronotype.

Letter to the Editor, Westborough Chronotype, January 26, 1884

Anti-Suffrage Speaker

On November 2, 1915, men living in Massachusetts voted by referendum whether to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to give women the right to vote. Debate across the state was intense, but the amendment was soundly defeated. Tewksbury was the only town in the state that voted to pass the referendum (with a vote of 149 for and 148 against), and only 35.5% voted in favor. Three other states voted on similar referendums at the time—New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York—and all three joined Massachusetts in defeating the measure.

Charles L. Underhill (Who’s Who in State Politics (1918) page 313; Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47515213)

Leading up to voting on the referendum, Charles L. Underhill spoke against women’s suffrage in Westborough. Hill served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and later went on to become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Westborough Chronotype, June 18, 1915

One writer took issue with at least one of Underhill’s points about Kansas and prohibition.

Westborough Chronotype, July 2, 1915

Pro-Suffrage Speaker

Frances Kellogg Curtis was the Chief Marshall of the first Massachusetts Suffrage Parade and was on the Executive Board of the Massachusetts Equal Suffrage Association. She lectured on women’s suffrage–at times on a soap box set up on the street–and as a member of the Americanization Committee of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association, she taught English to Italian immigrant women in Boston’s North End.

Westborough Chronotype, August 27, 1915

A follow-up report appeared in the Chronotype a week after Curtis’s talk.

Westborough Chronotype, September 17, 1915

Debates in and around Westborough

At Town Hall

Westborough Chronotype, February 18, 1882
Westborough Chronotype, May 21, 1915

In People’s Homes

Westborough Chronotype, March 24, 1888

The Chronotype regularly reported meetings of the Westborough chapter of the Women’s Suffrage League, which took place in various people’s homes, between 1866 and 1888.

In Churches

Westborough Chronotype, March 6, 1914

House-to-House (and at Fenway Park)

Westborough Chronotype, August 6, 1915
Westborough Chronotype, October 29, 1915

At the Library

Westborough Chronotype, November 13, 1914
Westborough Chronotype, March 5, 1915
Westborough Chronotype, February 16, 1917

Success

Massachusetts finally became the eighth state to ratify the 19th Amendment on June 25, 1919, and women across the United States officially gained full suffrage after Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920.

Join the Westborough Decade Project

Since we are just entering a new decade, the Westborough History Working Group will be selecting a different decade from the 20th century and exploring what life was like in Westborough during that time. As a group, we will select which decade we want to explore, learn how to use the resources here at the library to research that decade, and then create a final project to share what we have learned with the Westborough community.

The Westborough History Working Group generally meets on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. on the 3rd floor of the Library.

If you are interested in joining this project, please e-mail Anthony Vaver, Local History Librarian, at avaver@town.westborough.ma.us. The first meeting, where we will select which decade we want to explore, will be on Wednesday, January 15 at 2 p.m. on the 3rd floor of the library.

Arcade Building, 1977

Westborough Historical Society Program: “Three Turning Points That Changed American History”

Westborough Historical Society Program: “Three Turning Points That Changed American History,” Monday, January 13, 2020, 7:00 p.m., Westborough Public Library Meeting Room. Prof. Edward O’Donnell of the College of the Holy Cross will discuss landmark movements and events that have irrevocably altered the direction of the nation. Some were groundbreaking political concepts; some were dramatic military victories and defeats. Still others were religious movements or technological innovations. Can you guess the three most important turning points?

Prof. Edward O’Donnell

Prof. Edward O’Donnell, chair of the History Department of the College of the Holy Cross, is an expert in Irish-American history and the Gilded Age. He holds a Ph.d. in American history from Columbia University and  taught at Hunter College, CUNY from 1995-2001. In 1986 he joined the faculty of Holy Cross and hosts the podcast, “In the Past Lane,” which explores topics in U.S. history. Professor O’Donnell is known for providing historical commentary for PBS, the History Channel, ABC World News, NPR, and the BBC. He has curated major exhibits on U.S.history across the nation. Among his books are “101 Things Everyone Should Know about Irish-American History, ”Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality,” and “Visions of America: A History of the United States.”

Dec. 11 Meeting of the Westborough History Working Group

Next Meeting of the Westborough History Working Group: Wednesday, Dec. 11 at 2:00 p.m. on the 3rd floor of the Westborough Public Library.

Are you interested in working with historical documents and records held at the Westborough Center for History and Culture? Come to this meeting to help out. If you plan to attend, please e-mail Anthony Vaver, Local History Librarian, at avaver@town.westborough.ma.us.

How Does History Connect Westborough and India?: Separation

Note: The following is the eleventh and final post in a series that presents my attempt to answer the question, “How does history connect Westborough and India?” See the Introduction for an overview of the series and to start reading it from the beginning.

–Anthony Vaver, Local History Librarian, Westborough Public Library

Separation

The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India ultimately failed due to a lack of organization and institutional structures to sustain it. But the American colonies were well positioned to carry out rebellion against the British government and rule themselves once they separated from England. Westborough and other towns in Massachusetts had their own sets of laws, self-rule in the form of town meetings, elected representatives to the House of Representatives, and their own militias. During the American Revolution, more than a hundred Committees of Correspondence were set up, including one in Westborough, which served as an informal shadow government to carry out rebellion and ultimately revolution. After both the signing of the Declaration of Independence by the Americans on July 4, 1776 and British defeat in the resulting war, England turned its attention to defending its colonial interests in India and other colonies throughout the world.

In 1885, the Indian National Congress was formed to advocate for Indian home rule, and when Mahatma Gandhi became its leader in 1920 he began to mobilize it into a body of resistance under a doctrine of “non-cooperation.” Gandhi and other Indian nationalists studied the tactics and read the treatises that led to the American Revolution for inspiration when they organized boycotts, shutdowns, demonstrations, and tax protests.  Mahatma Gandhi’s famous “salt march” to the sea to collect salt in protest over its taxation by the British was one such protest. Gandhi also used the symbolism and economic significance of cotton to galvanize nationalist and anti-colonial sentiment by both writing a history of cotton in India and practicing the spinning of cotton on a wheel as a means of publicizing India’s potential to reclaim its dominant position in the global economy from its British oppressors.

In the end, the strains of World War II on Great Britain ultimately led to India’s separation from the British Empire and its independence. During negotiations over the future of Indian rule in 1947, the two dominant political parties, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, could not agree on a common future. The League insisted on carving out part of India to create a separate Muslim nation, which ultimately became Pakistan. The inability to keep India together as one nation resulted in mass displacement, plunder, and revenge killings with over 1 million people dying and more than 12 million being forced from their homes before it was all over.

The Declaration of Independence copied into Westborough’s Town Records, 1776
(Westborough Town Clerk, http://repository.westborougharchive.org/files/original/700d82def53c4ac7be6098193541cdf0.jpg)

The Boston printing of the Declaration of Independence was circulated to towns across Massachusetts and included an order at the bottom for town clerks to copy the content of the document into their town records. Above is Westborough’s hand-written copy.

Gandhi during the Salt March, 1930
(Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gandhi_during_the_Salt_March.jpg)

In an act of civil disobedience against the heavy taxation of salt by the British, Gandhi organized a widespread protest march to the sea to collect salt through evaporation in violation of the salt laws.

Gandhi Spinning Cotton, 1940’s
(Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gandhi_spinning.jpg)

As a reminder of India’s history of once being the dominant producer of cotton cloth throughout the world, Gandhi held cotton spinning demonstrations and encouraged others throughout India to take up the practice.

* * *

Social and political tensions created during British rule in both India and the United States continue to be felt today. In India, violent conflict played out almost immediately during the partitioning of the country into India and Pakistan in 1947, and struggle between the two countries over control of Kashmir continues to this day. In the United States, tensions over slavery lingered for decades until they finally came to a head with the outbreak of the American Civil War. But the social, political, and cultural differences that initially led to this conflict in many ways remain unresolved. Westborough and India no longer fall under British rule, but the common history we experienced under that rule continues to reverberate and connect us, even though geographically we sit at opposite sides of the globe.

This concludes the series of posts on “How Does History Connect Westborough and India?”

Westborough-India Series Bibliography

Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Vintage Books, 2014.

Bunker, Nick. An Empire on the Edge. New York: Vintage Books, 2014.

Collingham, Lizzie. Taste of Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World. New York: Basic Books, 2017.

Darwin, John. Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012.

Eacott, Jonathan. Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 2016.

Frankopan, Peter. Silk Roads: A New History of the World. New York: Vintage Books, 2015.

Freeman, Joshua B. Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Schama, Simon. Civilizations. PBS television series, 2018. http://www.pbs.org/civilizations/home/.

Vaver, Anthony. The Rebellion Begins: Westborough and the Start of the American Revolution. Westborough, MA: Pickpocket Publishing, 2017.

Wilson, Jon. The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India. New York: Public Affairs, 2016.

How Does History Connect Westborough and India?: Cotton

Note: The following is the tenth in a series of eleven weekly posts that present my attempt to answer the question, “How does history connect Westborough and India?” See the Introduction for an overview of the series and to start reading it from the beginning.

–Anthony Vaver, Local History Librarian, Westborough Public Library

Cotton

The leading cotton manufacturers from the beginning of history up until the early nineteenth century were from India, and the quality of their cotton fabrics was known throughout the world. Weavers in Bengal produced fine muslins, the southeastern coast of India was known for its chintzes and calicoes, and Surat in the western coast of India made strong but inexpensive fabrics. India was also at the forefront of innovation in cotton production. Indians invented the roller gin to remove seeds from raw cotton, the bow to clean and disentangle ginned cotton, the spinning wheel to produce thread, and a variety of looms, including the treadle loom, which allowed weavers to use their feet and free up their hands to move the horizontal weft across the vertical warp threads more economically. India’s skill in cloth production and its central location in global trade routes meant that it had the greatest impact in spreading cotton throughout the world and into Europe, where people mainly dressed in fur, wool, and linen before cotton came to its shores.

Europeans began the process of inserting themselves into the global cotton trade as soon as they landed by ship in India in the seventeenth century. With control of India, the British eventually wove a complex web of trade in cotton textiles across four continents: Indian weavers produced cloth that was used to pay for slaves in Africa; the slaves worked on plantations in the Americas to produce cotton that was used to make yarn in England; and that yarn was then shipped to India to be woven into cloth.

Before this trade loop was put in place, England first had to find vast quantities of raw cotton to keep its efficient industrial factories running full time. The American South ultimately fulfilled this need with its ideal climate for cultivating cotton, but the strand of cotton that grew best in the South was “upland cotton.” This strand had a shorter staple length than Indian cotton and the fibers tightly attached to the seeds so that Indian methods for removing the seeds were ineffective. But when Westborough native Eli Whitney invented a new kind of cotton gin in 1793, the machine led to a phenomenal increase in cotton production in the United States, rapidly expanded cotton land use, supplied British textile mills with practically unlimited supplies of raw cotton, and spread slavery across the South.

Indian Woman Ginning Cotton, 1815-1920
(Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_woman_gining_cotton.jpg)

Here, an Indian woman turns rollers to separate seeds from the fibers in Indian cotton.

Eli Whitney, 1822
by Samuel Morse
(Yale University Art Gallery, https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/31)
Eli Whitney s Cotton Gin Patent Drawing, 03/14/1794
(National Archives and Records Administration Records of the Patent and Trademark Office Record Group 241, Identifier: 305886, https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent)

After Westborough’s Eli Whitney patented an invention for a cotton gin that worked on the particular cotton strain grown in North America, cotton production soared and spread slavery throughout the South.

* * *

Read the next post in the series: Separation.

Westborough-India Series Bibliography

Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Vintage Books, 2014.

Bunker, Nick. An Empire on the Edge. New York: Vintage Books, 2014.

Collingham, Lizzie. Taste of Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World. New York: Basic Books, 2017.

Darwin, John. Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012.

Eacott, Jonathan. Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 2016.

Frankopan, Peter. Silk Roads: A New History of the World. New York: Vintage Books, 2015.

Freeman, Joshua B. Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Schama, Simon. Civilizations. PBS television series, 2018. http://www.pbs.org/civilizations/home/.

Vaver, Anthony. The Rebellion Begins: Westborough and the Start of the American Revolution. Westborough, MA: Pickpocket Publishing, 2017.

Wilson, Jon. The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India. New York: Public Affairs, 2016.