The Valley of the Blackstone: Its People and Their Mill Villages

Albert Klyberg

The Blackstone River powered America’s entry into the Age of Industry. The success of Samuel Slater’s cotton spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1791 touched off a chain reaction that changed how people worked and where they lived. Between Worcester, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island are numerous mill towns and villages whose centuries-old history is now told in great detail by the late Al Klyberg, former executive director of the Rhode Island Historical Society, and resident of the Valley.

Al Klyberg played a leading role in the 1986 creation of the Blackstone River Valley Heritage Corridor between Providence and Worcester to encourage historical preservation and tourism in that region and, with close friend Dr. Robert Billington and others, he persisted in designating certain sites within that valley a formal unit of the National Park System. That project was completed on December 19, 2014, just two years before Al’s sudden death on January 10, 2017.

As Al worked towards these organizational goals, he began to research the history of his beloved valley. Slowly and meticulously (because he was better at making history than writing it) Al began to weave his historical tapestry century by century, mill village by mill village, and ethnic group by ethnic group from Providence northward to Worcester. The result is this major contribution to Rhode Island and regional history.