The Factory Girl's Song: Museum Object and Cultural History
The Factory Girl's Song: date made: 1840s. date made: 1835 - 1855. Object Name: broadside.
The object in the museum catalogue
This broadside contains the lyrics to “The Factory Girl’s Song,” a folk song whose origins date back at least to the 1830s. The song’s nineteen 4-line stanzas describe the daily work of the mill girls in different jobs: spinning, weaving, and dressing the finished cloth. At the end the singer tells of returning home to marry, giving up the rigors of tending the machinery and working for harsh overseers. The song may have originated in Lowell, Massachusetts, but some scholars suggest that the reference to wages earned in “shillings” instead of dollars may mean it had connections to Canadian immigrants to the Lowell textile mills. Several iterations of the song are known, including “The Lowell Factory Girl”, “The Factory Girl’s Come-All-Ye” from Lewiston, Maine, and generalized versions titled “Factory Girl.”
Materials, dates and provenance
- date made: 1840s
- date made: 1835 - 1855
- Object Name: broadside
- Physical Description: paper (overall material)
- Physical Description: printer's ink (overall material)
- Measurements: overall: 9 1/2 in x 5 3/4 in; 24.13 cm x 14.605 cm
- Measurements: overall: 9 in x 6 in; 22.86 cm x 15.24 cm
- place made: United States: New England
- Subject: Girls
- Subject: labor issues
- Subject: Music
- Subject: Textile Processing and Production
- ID Number: 2013.0125.01
- accession number: 2013.0125
- catalog number: 2013.0125.01
- Data Source: National Museum of American History
Sources and reuse
Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.
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