Needham's Knitting Industry Highlighted in New Book

March 12, 2012 - PRLog -- The newest addition to Arcadia Publishing’s popular Images of America series is Knitters of Needham from local author Chaim M. Rosenberg and the Needham Historical Society. The book boasts more than 200 vintage images and memories of days gone by of a once vibrant industry.

In the 19th century, knitters from the Midlands of England, made poor by the increasing flow of work into factories, brought their craft to America. Many of them settled in Highlandville, a village of Needham.

Working out of their homes, they knitted socks, mittens, gloves, underwear, and jackets, using hand- and foot-operated frame machines they brought from England. The more enterprising of them, like William Carter, John Moseley, and Joseph Thorpe, built large mills using steam-powered machinery.

The knitters carried the quiet farming town of Needham into the industrial age, attracting hundreds of immigrants to work in their mills. With a strong sense of civic responsibility, the knitters helped build schools, churches, town libraries, parks, and even a cricket field. Early in the 20th century, faced with stiff competition from abroad, the knitters of Needham followed the general trend of the textile industry by consolidating and moving production to the South.

Highlights of Knitters of Needham:
•   The profits from the sale of the book will go to the Needham Historical Society.
•   Most of the images in the book came from the historical society and the Needham Public Library.
•   The knitting mills helped develop Needham Heights.

Chaim M. Rosenberg has long studied the Massachusetts industrial age and is the author of The Great Workshop: Boston’s Victorian Age and several other works. The images in Knitters of Needham come from the author’s private collection as well as from the archives of the Needham Historical Society.

Available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and online retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at www.arcadiapublishing.com or
(888)-313-2665.  

Arcadia Publishing is the leading publisher of local and regional history in the United States.  Our mission is to make history accessible and meaningful through the publication of books on the heritage of America’s people and places.  Have we done a book on your town?  Visit www.arcadiapublishing.com.

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With more than 7,500 local history titles published to date, Arcadia Publishing is the leading publisher of local and regional history in the United States. Widely recognized sepia books feature hundreds of vintage historical images.