Robert Booth and Amy E. Kellett
A preliminary study of the industrial project by which Salem re-invented itself as a manufacturing center after the collapse of its maritime commerce. In 1846 the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company built the largest steam-powered cotton-sheeting factory in the United States, with huge implications for Salem.
In a matter of two years, its population increased by 600 factory workers and their families, almost all of them in-migrants and immigrants residing in a built-new industrial village. Overnight, the city’s largest and most profitable business changed the course of Salem for the rest of the century. We are studying the business itself (projectors, investors, engineers, overseers) as well as the civic impact of a massive population influx and the origins and experience of the people who built the factory and operated its machinery to produce cotton sheeting, much of it for export to African markets.