Nashua, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire in the 1920s

Work

Mills set the day

The most telling number is 92 manufacturing establishments with 9,057 wage earners⁴ in 1919. Textile work dominated the city’s identity through the Nashua Manufacturing Company’s cotton mills^5,6.

Who lived here

Many arrivals, many languages

Roughly 31 percent of Nashua’s people were foreign-born white residents^3,8 in 1920. The city’s own history places the widest immigrant wave between 1885 and 1925⁵, just ending as the decade opens.

Law & power

City hall kept count

Nashua was not a village but a chartered city since 1853⁵. Its government made yearly public accounts, including annual reports of expenses and vital statistics¹.

In the air

Labor was the argument

The sharpest local question was who controlled mill time and mill pay: the 1922 textile strike reached Nashua⁶. When the mills partly reopened, a report said a riot followed an attack on a worker⁷.

Faith

English in parish schools

As across New Hampshire, parochial schools operated under rules that made designated instruction and administration exclusively English¹⁰. That mattered in a city with a French-language newspaper⁹ and many French Canadian families.

What people feared

Death stayed close

In 1920 the city counted 466 deaths against 786 births². Factory injury, infectious disease, childbirth, and old age all lay behind such totals, though the opened sources do not break Nashua’s deaths down by cause.

Roads & news

A newspaper city

News came through a dense local press: the Nashua Telegraph archive holds 40,998 pages from the 1920s⁹. French-speaking readers also had L’Impartial, published in Nashua from 1898 to 1964⁹.

Money

Wages, not rents

The city’s economy can be measured better at the factory gate than at the kitchen table: 1919 manufactured products were valued at $15,918,377⁴. Ordinary rents and retail prices remain an online gap in the sources opened here.

Year by year

1. 1920The federal census counted Nashua at 28,379 people. here³
2. 1920Nashua recorded 786 births, 585 marriages, and 466 deaths in its municipal vital statistics. here²
3. 1920Women voted in a United States presidential election for the first time after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. the country
4. 1922The New England textile strike reached Nashua and the Nashua and Jackson mills resumed only partial operation by June. here⁶
5. 1922A financial newspaper reported a riot at Nashua after an attack on a worker at the Nashua Manufacturing Company plant. here⁷
6. 1924The Mohawk Tannery began tanning hides beside the Nashua River. here
7. 1927Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic, a world event followed in American newspapers. the world
8. 1929The stock market crashed in October, beginning the economic crisis Nashua carried into the next decade. the country

Pictures from the time

What the sources say

• Nashua published a municipal annual report for the financial year 1920, recording city government, expenses, and vital statistics. from the sources¹
• The 1920 annual report gave Nashua 786 births, 585 marriages, 466 deaths, and a census population of 28,379. from the sources²
• The federal census counted Nashua at 28,379 people in 1920. from the sources³
• By the 1930 census Nashua had grown to 31,463 people, so the city added a little over 3,000 residents during the decade. from the sources²
• The Census Bureau listed Nashua among New Hampshire cities of more than 25,000 people in 1920, alongside Manchester. from the sources³
• Nashua stood where the Nashua River joins the Merrimack River, and its older transport and economic ties ran south toward Boston and north toward Concord. inferred⁵
• The Nashua Manufacturing Company was still the city’s defining textile employer in the 1920s, long before its final liquidation in 1947. from the sources^5,6
• In 1919 Nashua had 92 manufacturing establishments with an average of 9,057 wage earners and products valued at $15,918,377. from the sources⁴
• Hillsborough County, including Manchester and Nashua, reported 44.6 percent of New Hampshire’s manufacturing wage earners and 45.1 percent of its manufactured product value in 1919. from the sources⁴
• The 1922 New England textile strike affected Nashua; by June 1922 the Nashua and Jackson mills of the Nashua Manufacturing Company were reported as resuming partial operation. from the sources⁶
• A June 1922 financial newspaper reported a riot at Nashua after an attack on a worker at the Nashua Manufacturing Company plant. from the sources⁷
• In 1920 Nashua had 19,546 native white residents and about 8,792 foreign-born white residents, making the foreign-born roughly 31 percent of the city. from the sources^3,8
• Nashua’s city history identifies Irish and Roman Catholic arrivals from the late 1830s, French Canadians from the late 1860s, and a wider immigrant wave from 1885 to 1925 including Jewish, Greek, Polish, Lithuanian, Armenian, Romanian, Lebanese, Albanian, Italian, and Chinese residents. inferred⁵
• The Nashua Public Library’s digital archive lists the Nashua Telegraph for 1901–1952 and 40,998 newspaper pages from the 1920s. from the sources⁹
• The same archive lists L’Impartial, a French-language Nashua newspaper, for 1898–1964. from the sources⁹
• Nashua had been a city since 1853, after the old Dunstable/Nashua and Nashville division was resolved under a city charter. inferred⁵
• In New Hampshire during the early 1920s, parochial elementary schools were required to teach designated branches and administration exclusively in English, while devotional exercises could use any language. from the sources¹⁰
• Nashua’s 1920s housing descriptions by neighborhood are not well represented in the online sources opened here. not known
• Local retail prices and ordinary rents for Nashua in the 1920s were not found in the sources opened here. not known
• Because Nashua was a New England mill city, many daily routines would have been set by factory shifts, church calendars, school terms, and shopping on Main Street, but the exact rhythm varied by household and workplace. inferred

Sources

1. Sixty-eighth annual report of the municipal government of the city of Nashua, for the financial year 1920. University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository, 1921
2. City of Nashua: Nashua’s Vital Statistics. City of Nashua
3. Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920, Population—New Hampshire, Composition and Characteristics. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1920
4. Manufactures: 1919, New Hampshire. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1919
5. History of Nashua. City of Nashua
6. Commercial and Financial Chronicle, June 3, 1922. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1922
7. Commercial and Financial Chronicle, June 17, 1922. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1922
8. Population—New Hampshire. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1920
9. Digital Archives of the Nashua Public Library. Nashua Public Library
10. 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica: New Hampshire. Wikisource, 1922

Nashua in other decades