Worcester Cotton Manufactory account book

Daybook of the Worcester (Mass.) Cotton Manufactory, documenting investments, dividends, and factory expenses from 1789 to 1791. The volume contains accounts of shareholders in the Manufactory, among them printer Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831), merchant Daniel Waldo (1763-1845), and Levi Lincoln (1749-1820; Harvard AB 1772), Massachusetts governor and United States Attorney General under Thomas Jefferson. There are also records of expenditures for supplies and equipment, and hiring tradesmen to construct or repair machinery; wages of factory workers; and board of women employees. There seems to have been a gender-based division of labor, with men serving as weavers, pickers, and carders, and women as spinners. Workers included Nelly Joslin, Abigail Gould, Scipio Hemmingway, Nancy Priest, James Dignam, and an African American man named Jack. There are also bills to board "sundry girls," although it is unclear if the term refers to young adults or children who may have been employed by the Manufactory. Other accounts show commissions and net proceeds to merchants like John Kneeland, who sold the company's finished products.