Newmarket today is a quiet residential community located on the banks of the Lamprey River. Most of its surviving textile mill buildings are vacant, but only 80 years ago the town was bustling with commerce. Whistles blew to signal the start and end of each work day. Immigrants from all over the world came to work at the mills, making silk, cotton and taffeta, among other fabrics. They endured 12-hour days in treacherous conditions for just $3.25 a week. 

The Ampers& Studio and Gallery is located in Rivermoor Landing, a converted mill building on Main Street. This month it’s showing a collection of photographs and clothing from the era, as well as contemporary artwork of Newmarket native Eddie Langlois, in remembrance of the mills and the people who worked at them. 

Called “Looms on the Lamprey: A Newmarket Mills Retrospective,” the exhibit is a collaboration with the Lamprey Arts & Culture Alliance and Newmarket Historical Society to honor to Newmarket’s not-so-distant past. It tells tales from the countless immigrants who worked at the mills, including aspects of Langlois’ own family story.

“I believe in inherited memory. My grandparents worked at the cloth mills. I trained to be a tailor, and I was a costumier in New York City. I worked for the Exeter Manufacturing Company. It’s in my blood. It’s who I am in relation to the display. It’s all authentic in that sense,” Langlois says.

His father and grandparents worked at the mills, and their lives are represented in two of his pieces, called “The Courtship of My Grandparents” and “The House of Lydia.” “Courtship” is based on a photo of Langlois’ grandfather sitting in a tree and his grandmother standing next to him, wearing her long work apron. The photo is lovingly recreated in papier-mâché relief, with the figures wearing clothing sewed from decades-old Newmarket-made cloth.

“The House of Lydia” tells the story of Langlois’ grandmother, who died shortly after her 14th pregnancy. The piece is set in a dollhouse with three compartments that show different scenes. The first is her funeral; the second shows the bed where “petit Eddie,” the youngest of Lydia’s children, hid after he heard news of her death; and the third shows Lydia standing in her kitchen, held up by two winged stillborn babies while she nurses a third, healthy child. 

Langlois’ third piece, called “Kiteboy,” pays tribute to the children of the mills. The piece hangs from the ceiling and shows a young boy with large, colorful wings that represent the beauty and freedom of childhood. Mill children weren’t allowed the luxury of a carefree childhood. Many started working as early as age 10. Their sad faces are apparent in the historical photographs, their bodies small next to the adult workers.

Those children have been all but forgotten, but Langlois wants them to be remembered. “Attention must be paid,” he says. “That’s what I’m doing. This is in honor of my family, from their work to their personal lives. There is a sense of justice here.”

Langlois’ sculptures start with wire skeletons, called armatures, and are then covered with upholsterer’s batting mixed with glue. The sculptures are then coated with wax that Langlois can shape and form into small details and deep textures.    

In addition to Langlois’ pieces and the blown-up sepia photographs of mill workers and the mills themselves, the exhibit contains a short video featuring the oral history of Alphonse Tourigny, a mill worker. Played by Donald LaBranche, Tourigny is interviewed by Eddie Langlois about his life at the mills. When asked about his childhood, Tourigny says, “What childhood?” John Carmichael adapted the screenplay from the book “Drowned Valley” by John P. Adams. The video provides a personalized story from a worker’s own words.

Kimberly Foss, owner of Ampers& Studio, says the goal of the exhibit is to teach the community why the mills are important. “A lot of people don’t realize why the mills are here,” she says. “They’re everywhere, and most of us just drive by them every day and don’t think much about it.”

“Looms on the Lamprey” is art informed by history. Lorelai Chernyshov is a board member of LACA. The organization’s goal is to promote arts and culture in the community. “This exhibit goes right to the heart of our community,” she says. “The definition of culture is history and art, and this exhibit is a culmination of everything LACA stands for.”  

Visitors to the exhibit often become emotional because the photos and art pieces make the formerly anonymous workers undeniably real, Foss says. People come in and recognize names and even faces in the photos. Foss says a woman came in and said, “My grandfather started working at the mills when he was 10 years old.” One man described a piece of machinery that sat where Foss’ desk is now located.

The first water-powered mill in Newmarket opened in 1623. It was a grist mill that ground wheat into flour. “Where there is water, there is commerce,” Foss says. Most of the steam and coal-fired mills were extinct by the time of the Great Depression due to worker strikes and financial troubles, but some new industries have moved into the old buildings. The exhibit connects Newmarket’s history to the present day. French and Irish tombstones fill the cemeteries and Polish Babka bread is still sold at Marelli’s Fruit and Real Estate. New immigrants are coming in to work.

“Laotians have come to Newmarket, living where the Poles used to live,” Langlois says. “The story continues.”

Looms on the Lamprey: A Newmarket Mills retrospective
presented by the Newmarket Historical Society and the Lamprey Arts and Culture Alliance at Ampers& Studio, 125 Main St., Suite C, Newmarket.
There is a $3 suggested donation.
Hours are 2 to 6pm, Monday– Thursday, through Sept. 29. During the Newmarket Heritage Festival, the gallery will be open Saturday, Sept. 16, noon to 5 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 17, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.