ACADEMIC REVIEWS
Slatersville: America’s First Mill Village relives a story that goes well beyond a small Rhode Island Community. The story of Slatersville is intimately linked with some of the most pressing issues America faces today: the relationship between business and society; the impact of innovation, boom, bust and competition; our irrevocably multi-cultural society; the role and impact of slavery, and the disenfranchisement of African Americans. These issues, and more, are wrapped around the story of Samuel Slater and his relatives who were in large measure responsible for the industrial revolution in the United States.
In 1793 Samuel Slater and Brown family members and friends created the first successful textile thread mill in the United States, located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The textile industry subsequently exploded, with many ups and downs along the way. Slatersville, founded by Samuel Slater and his children and extended family, played a central role in the expansion and decline of the industry in New England over the next one hundred plus years.
Filmmaker Christian de Rezendes and his colleagues, through painstaking research, links the seemingly disparate aspects of the story, to give us a much deeper understanding of our history – how we got here and why. While this all may sound like a worthwhile effort one might get the impression that it could be a bit weighty and slow. It is anything but. These shows are entertaining and for the most part, fast-paced. They are also particularly well produced. I found this to be the television equivalent of reading a really good book, one that you just can’t put down. I’m now anxiously awaiting season two.
As a business school professor, I would strongly endorse the series for my faculty colleagues and for students in a variety of courses. The story has relevance well beyond the study of business history, particularly to the study of social, environmental, and economic sustainability. The textile industry in the United States was not particularly economically sustainable in spite of the considerable wealth created and left a massive environmental and social footprint that we still live with, even if most of us don’t recognize it. It is, of course, also a very engaging story about a small Rhode Island Community.
James Hunt
Associate Professor
Babson College
September 3, 2023
As an Instructor of United States History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Bristol Community College, and a lifelong resident of Rhode Island, I have an interest in the development of historical documentation of Rhode Island and the United States. Christian de Rezendes’ documentary series Slatersville: America’s First Mill Village has been and continues to be an enormous undertaking. His work, consisting of eleven episodes that span from the founding of Slatersville in 1803, by Samuel and John Slater, to the present day, captures the economic and social developments of the village.
What makes the series unique is the emphasis it places upon the people who have lived in the town. De Rezendes repeatedly shows the uniqueness of the village, its people, and how the changes that occurredwithin the country affected the people of the town. It emphasizes the village of Slatersville as a microcosm of the other mill towns that were established first in New England as well as the rest of the country. De Rezendes draws on sources located in depositories ranging from Rhode Island Historical Society, University of Michigan, and personal interviews.
To present his thesis, Christian de Rezendes uses a variety of resources and scholarship. The episode that I reviewed for this review is Episode 5: The World According to Uncle Johnny. Episode 5 is informative, entertaining and painstaking well researched. De Rezendes examines the period from a variety of perspectives. The episode begins showing Slatersville as seen by the work of Rhode Island artist Maxwell Mays, then progresses into the history of the Slater family beginning with the extravagant lifestyles of John Whipple Slater and other members of the Slater family. The episode then shifts to more practical members of the Slater family including cousins, nieces and nephews who attempt to maintain the mills in the late 1800s, and finally the demands of workers who complain about the disparity between their own wages compared to the income of the manufacturers.
To effectively explain all these aspects, De Rezendes makes great use of nonpublished primary sources such as personal letters, dairies, and journals, including Gertrude Hooper’s personal account of her family’s history, titled Relativity Speaking. What is particular poignant is that de Rezendes gained access to papers of the nephew of John Whipple Slater, Rufus Waterman III. John Whipple Slater hired his nephew to run the mills in Slatersville while he went globetrotting around the world on his ship The Sagamore. A descendent of Rufus Waterman III, George Waterman III gave de Rezendes and his researchers access to material that had never previously been seen by historians. That treasure trove of documents which included letters, correspondences and dairies had been in possession of Waterman Family from 1946 to 2010. George Waterman III allowed de Rezendes and his researchers to examine the material. The information that they gather from the documents shed new light in explaining what was occurring not only within the village of Slatersville, but also the dynamics that was occurring within the Slater family.
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De Rezendes used the expertise of Dr. Barbara Tucker to explain the development of the textile Industry in the United States. Dr. Tucker is Professor Emerita at Eastern Connecticut State University and has written several articles and books on the Industrial Period in the 1800s. Dr. Tucker’s books Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry, 1790-1860, and Industrializing Antebellum America: The Rise of Manufacturing Entrepreneurs in the Early Republic. The presence of her insights gives the documentary an enormous amount of credibility.
De Rezendes also interviewed Dr. Scott Molloy, the preeminent Labor Historian from Rhode Island. Molloy is Professor Emeritus at the University of Rhode Island. Molloy received his Master’s Degree from the University of New Hampshire and his Ph.D. from Providence College in History, and is the author of two books: Trolley Wars: Street Car Workers on the line and Irish Titan, Irish Toilers: Joseph Baingan and Nineteenth -Century New England. Molloy is an expert in examining Rhode Island’s Labor History. His analysis of the conflicts and events that were occurring between the workers and the mill owners provides valuable context to the viewer.
As noted in this episode, De Rezendes used letters as primary sources. In earlier episodes, de Rezendes used letters written by first and second generations of the Slater family to effectively reveal their reactions to events that took place within the family. This provided some of the most poignant, heartbreaking and deeply personal moments within the series.
Christian de Rezendes also used primary sources obtained from the depositories of church records, museums, and the Rhode Island Historical Society. Of great importance in making the film is George White’s Memoir of Samuel Slater: The Father of American Manufactures: Connected with a History of the Rise and Progress of the Cotton Manufacture in England and America, with Remarks on the Moral Influence of Manufactories in the United States. The early episodes of Slatersville could stand alone as a Documentary of Samuel Slater and his influence on the development of the Textile Industry in the United states. Film historians have sadly neglected this aspect of United States History. Christian de Rezendes should be praised for filling this void in documentary history
To get the story of those who played vital roles in the development of the mill town, de Rezendes interviewed descendants of many of the original Slater family members, extended family members, and participants. While this is not a first-hand account, it does provide personal characteristics of the people who are being studied. The interviews with the descendants of the Hooper, Slater, and Waterman families are very effective. It increases the sense that the documentary centers around the people. It is the people making decisions and affecting the outcome of the village of Slatersville. The use of authentic voices gives insight into the thinking of the individuals and maintains the unique characteristics of the people.
While the use of individual accounts effectively portrays the lives, hopes and dreams of the individuals; individual stories can be biased. The documentary uses articles from the Providence Journal to offset the individual stories. It is also a counter balance to the labor historians as the Providence Journal at this time tended to be a pro-business and a conservative paper. The Providence Journal’s article provides the general sentiment within the state.
Overall, Slatersville is a masterpiece of research and scholarship. Taking information from a variety of resources that are applicable to the events that were studied, De Rezendes weaves a story of the economic transformation of the village of Slatersville with the stories of the lives of the people who persevered and transformed their own lives generation after generation in that mill town.
Richard Ironfield
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth - Dartmouth, MA
Bristol Community College - Fall River, MA