Olympia Farrar #35 posed for the young woman working at the industrial loom.
Mills across Maine employed many children as young as 5 for tasks deemed appropriate for children, requiring less strength or skill. In the textile industry children held various jobs:
- sweepers: keeping the floors clean of fabric scraps and cotton fibers was hard but essential.
- doffers: placing empty bobbins in the spinning frame to fill with thread
- quillers: loading hoppers with empty loom quills which would be wound with thread and taken back to the shuttles of the large looms.
- spinners: often a job for young girls or women, winding strands of thread into fine yarn onto bobbins.
fabric, fabric, more fabric
The 252 foot long, four story Cotton Mill #34, built in 1844, still stands in Hallowell. In its heyday of production, around 1866, the mill employed 200 textile workers making fabric for curtains, jeans, dress, coat linings, a vast range of fabrics for daily use.
In the late 1880’s the southern states that provided the raw cotton, built their own textile mills and this led to the close of Hallowell’s textile industry. The Cotton Mill was shut down in 1890.
From 1909 to 1915 the first floor was occupied by Electrophone, producing one of the world’s first electric automobile horns.
Then from 1920 to 1966 the building became a shoe factory.
One story I was told was that during World War II the shoe factory made boots and factory workers would add notes of encouragement in the boots for the soldiers.
artist, Chris Cart
In 1979 the building became The Cotton Mill Apartments when the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in participation with the Department of Housing and Urban Development approved the conversion of the mill into housing for the elderly.
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