Mill Life Oral History Collection (Mss. Gr. 81)

Biographical or Historical Information

The Mill Life Oral History began as part of the Oral History Project of Rhode Island, begun under the auspices of the Rhode Island Department of State Library Services (DSLS) in 1970. Between 1970 and 1973, DSLS staff identified and recorded interviews with about seventy former mill workers who were employed in the textile mills of Rhode Island between approximately 1890 and 1950.

When DSLS discontinued its participation in the project in early 1974, it transferred the tapes and all related materials (transcripts, signed release forms, biographical sketches) to the History Department of the University of Rhode Island. Under the leadership of Professor Harvey Kantor and, after Kantor's death, Professor James Findlay, History Department faculty and graduate students continued to identify and record interviews with former mill workers in Rhode island. The project was funded through the History Department.

By the end of 1977, when the project came to a practical, if not official end, the History Department had added 102 interviews to the 70 completed by DSLS. Typed transcripts were also completed for thirty-three of the interviews.

In 1990, the Special Collections Department of the University Library was awarded a grant from the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities to complete transcription of the 139 interviews lacking transcripts. A grant from the University of Rhode Island Foundation provided funds to develop an index to the transcripts. Additional funding and support for the transcription project was provided by the Blackstone Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission and the Kimball Oral History Fund.