Nashua's Canadian Ties

In recent weeks, we've been doing a lot more walking around the City of Nashua, NH. As regular readers of this blog may know, we live in a building that was housed a major New England textile mill. (This blog has featured many photos from our 5th floor river view. This post presents a different view, one with a history.)

Clocktower Place apartments, the former Nashua Manufacturing Company, was part of the city’s original textile mill empire. The first major building, Mill No. 1 was built in 1825 and was in operation a year later. Several mill buildings followed in later years.

This view was taken in a pocket park located between a parking area and the banks of the Nashua River, a very short walk from the mill apartments. The parks official name is Le Parc de Notre Renaissance Francaise, but it's locally called Renaissance Park or simply the French Park. It's dedicated to French-Canadian immigrants who settles here in the 1800s and worked in the textile mills. 

The first wave of French-Canadian immigrants arrived in Nashua between 1870 and 1872. By 1936, 14,560 of Nashua’s 31,938 residents were French-Canadian immigrants who worked in Nashua’s textile mills. They expanded their new community by building schools, churches and establishing new businesses to meet the needs of the growing population. The immigrant workers quickly learned the trades needed to support the rising demands of the textile industry.

The park features a small flower garden that's part of the city's parks department, but is maintained by a couple of our neighbors who tend to it on a regular basis. Currently, it has a variety of tulips and daffodils in bloom.

But, the park's centerpiece is not the flower garden, it's a 6-foot bronze statue, La Dame de Notre Renaissance Francaise” (The Lady of Our French Renaissance). It is situated on a 3-foot base and depicts an 1870s millworker and her young son. 

The woman has an arm around the boy and is wearing a cross around her neck. She has a weaving shuttle in her left pocket. The boy is looking up at her and holding a book written in French.

This art was the first full figure erected in Nashua in a century and the first in New England to recognize and honor Franco-American culture by recognizing women and children who worked in the mills during the first half of the 20th century. It was privately funded by the Franco-American community. (Unfortunately, graffiti has marred the plaque detailing its history.)

At its May 2001 dedication, the sculptor's creator, Christopher R. Gowell said that

she was proud to have had the chance to sculpt the figure of a strong French-Canadian

Christopher R. Gowell

woman. 

Gowell, who has sculpted the human figure for 40 years, is the Director/Owner of Sanctuary Arts, a realist art school in Eliot, ME. She has a bronze casting facility and teaches figure sculpture and technical sculpture workshops. Her public commissions also include a bronze firefighter’s memorial in Manchester, NH.

The Nashua Manufacturing Company was a major cotton textile manufacturer in operation from 1823 to 1945. It created roads and churches and opened a bank in 1935 to pay mill workers in its own currency. Others mills operated in the same period, but the Nashua Manufacturing Company was always the largest.

Photo Credit: Nashua Historical Society

Like most New England textile mills, the company struggled during the Depression and shut down after WW II, when much of the industry moved South for cheaper labor and land. In 1945, the mill was acquired by Textron, Inc. and, in 1949, was again shut down. A cluster of diversified industries, including an electric company and toy company later occupied the expansive properties and also ceased operations. The former Nashua company properties are listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.