Millyard Immigrants

Amoskeag mill workers apartments - mill in distance

Throughout New England, one industry attracted immigrants during the 19th century - the mills. Swift flowing water allowed industrialists to construct textile mills in many small towns. Originally these mills attracted  New England farm girls, most of whom were Anglo-Saxon Protestants. However, the influx of Irish and later French Canadian immigrants provided a steady flow of cheap labor for these towns Often whole families including children would be employed in the mills. Most of those workers were Catholics and some spoke French or Irish.

In Manchester NH, many of the mill buildings still stand and an excellent Millyard Museum showcases the many ethnic groups that worked there before and after the Civil War.  see http://www.manchesterhistoric.org/millyard-museum 

From my own family history on my mother's side, her Bresnahan and Leary families were connected with the Manchester mills. Her great grandmother Margaret Fleming Bresnahan b. in 1798 appears there in mid-century.  Her son Andrew and daughters Julia and Honora immigrated with her but her husband Cornelius may have died in Ireland. She appears in the Manchester city directory in the 1850's but not in the 1850 census.

Whether she worked in the mill is not clear but by 1860 census she is listed with her two daughters: Julia , 20 (my great grandmother) and Honora, 16 both spinners as well as Patrick, 17 and Margaret, 15  possibly cousins and Honora Dillon, 19 relationship unknown. All were working in the mill. Well into the 20th-century children were an important part of mill labor force.

Mill children 1909 In the early 1850's Andrew Bresnahan met Mary Leary. Mary may have immigrated around 1848 with her sister Hannah and their father John. A Mary Leary (Lary) of the right age appears in the 1850 census in Manchester, a millworker. Andrew and Mary married in 1854 in St. Ann's parish. Mary was the elder sister of James Leary, my mother's grandfather, who would later marry Andrew's sister Julia. Did Andrew also work in the mills? Some sources say that before the Civil War the mill employees were all female. However, since the mills were also producing steam engines right before the war and converted some sections to making munitions during the Civil War so it is possible he worked there. What is puzzling is his disappearance - neither he, his wife Mary or their young son Cornelius appear in the 1860 census anywhere in the US. By 1870, when Mary is a widow and she and her son are in the census but not Andrew .   Mill workers about 1900