Paul Frank and my wife Anne

My name is Paul and me and my wife, Anne, just moved into Manchester. We just moved from Japan because of the great rice fields in Manchester so we thought we could hit it big there. We definitely arent poor, but we arent rich either. We moved to Manchester because life in Japan was a little tougher than it is here. We lived in the mountains and fed off of the local indigenous creatures. We were also samurais. My wife Anne Frank is a skilled blade smith that specializes in assassination samurai swords.

Manchester story

My name is Jacques Pierre XXX. I am the wealthiest British aristocrat around, and I am the baron of this surrounding area. My wife Elizabeth and I grew up with money in our baths instead of water. We had so much we even had people brush our own teeth, and physically walk us around the house. It was inevitable that two such rich and fine people would one day get married, so that the wealth was doubled. We have one son named Frederick XVI. Frederick is too good and smart to be roaming the dirty streets that those savages who run our farm live on. We pay for the best and most educated tutors to come and teach Frederick all of the schoolwork that he requires. My son will not be a thief and pickpocket who steals for a living. My family has owned a farm for very many years, and that farm still exists today. It was the provider of such glorious wealth for our family. We have hundreds, maybe thousands of workers who patrol and maintain the garden, because we can afford it! That's only counting the farm. We have many servants patrolling the royal garden, the royal mansion, and you can't forget about the kitchen as well! We have the best cook in all of Manchester! Awwww life is good.

Manchester story

My name is Stan Smith. My wife and our six children moved here to Manchester, because we heard that there were great job opportunities awaiting us. Never could I have been more wrong. I work two jobs: one in a silver mine and the other on a farm. The wage is horrible. Never have I been so ashamed in my life. When we moved here, I could not afford to raise my family on my own, so my wife had to return to work. She is very near to divorcing me now, she won't say that, but I can see it in her eyes. Six kids was far too many! Speaking of the kids, I have no idea where they are half of the time. I can not afford to send them to school, yet I do not have the heart to employ them in a job to help us. Sure, every once in a while I will sign them up for a job to do, only because we are in desperate need of the money, though never a permanent one. 

My job at the mine is terrible. We mine silver in the pitch black of the mine, and we swing pick axes everywhere, rarely checking to see if someone is behind us. I'm liable to lose an eye nearly every second that I am in that godforsaken place. But we all do what we can to support our families, the man who mines the most gets the most..... That's the way it works here. The farm is just horrible as well. Every day my back feels as if it will explode. There's so much bending that must be done in order to harvest the crops, plow the land, and replant the plants. My life is horrible.

Manchester

Hello, my name is Frederic Williamson, I'm 32 years old, and my family and I have recently moved to Manchester. We moved with another family, the Williams, and are currently sharing a house together. I have a lovely wife, Elizabeth, and four kids. James, who is about 4 years old stays with his mom most of the day. Marie, who just turned 9, helps out around the house and babysits James when necessary. John and Peter are 11 and 13 years old respectively and they just got jobs in textile factories in Manchester. 

Before we moved out to Manchester, we lived on a farm. It was a very simple life, but the work was very strenuous and the pay was not spectacular. John, Peter, and I worked countless hours every day plowing, seeding, harvesting and doing any other small jobs the farm owner needed us to do. We were forced to leave the farm because we lost our jobs as technology on the farm continually advanced. The labor force in the farm we worked on was cut in half in just over a year. So, like many other families, we moved to the city, where we found work in factories.

I found a job in a a coal mine just outside of the city and got payed slightly more than I would have for working at a factory, but i made John and Peter stick to the factory work because I didn't want them to have to deal with the tough conditions in the mines at such a young age. For now, it seems that life is pretty steady. We're not making huge profits at work, but it's enough to get by. The oldest Williams boys, Teddy, just received a huge cash bonus at work for being in the top three most productive workers in his factory and, being very generous, he is planning on using the money to renovate our house and add on two more rooms.

Liam Ross

My family and I moved to Manchester recently after running from what is now Turkey over conflicts with the government. I dont want to bore you with this story about my troubles in the past and my family have decided to put those years behind us. My name is Liam Ross and I like to call myself an inventor. I have had numerous inventions that I have been trying to sell over the past couple years all across the world but have yet to make any true income. My other job is a tailor, but this is just so I can get so money to provide for my children. There names are Jasper, Sarah, and Hazel. There are a handful especially for a single parent. My wife died right after Hazel was born by Romanian bandits. It was a tragic events and I have tried to find a women to fill the void my children have had in the past 3 years, but no one has stuck. This is another reason I have moved to the city, to find some one that can take care of my family while I invent and am at work to clean the house, etc. I am very excited about this move to Manchester, mainly because of the increased population, increasing my chance to sell my inventions and make so real money. Also I feel many of my inventions will be very useful to city-folk like this machine that I call the typewriter. You can write out all of your letters in this machine and it prints it onto parchment. I am very close to making this invention available to the public and I think it will be very popular. Enough about me because I want to talk about my children. Jasper is my only boy so he is the only one to go to school. He is learning to become an apprentice for a gunsmith, and hopes that he can one day learn how to make high powered guns that the armies can use. Sarah is a maid for the gentry even though she is only 12 and I am hoping I can marry her fairly soon. Lastly, Hazel is only 3 but no one can watch after, so I have to take her to work with my because I cannot afford a sitter to watch over her. I am sure once I find a wife, she can do this for me. Well that is all, and I am very excited to see how my life turns out in Manchester.

My Life in the Industrial Rev

Hello My name is Lilly Smith, I am 12 years old and my family consists of, My dad, George Smith, My mom Carol Smith and my twin sister Louise Smith. My sister and I have had to work in the textile business since we were three years old, it has been a rough life. Although it provides us with money to survive, our salary has barely increased within the the last nine years, its insane. My mother and father work in the steel industry because it pays double our wages. We would work there but they do not accept child in their work force. Since my sis and I are twins we share our clothing to save our money. Although we have had a livable life, working is not the easiest and defiantly not what children should be doing. The big industries should be paying more because they do make a huge profit and should raise what they pay there workers, if that happened more often our lives would be much more stress free and manageable.

Creative Story about Manchester

Marjory Marquardt

Hello my name is Meri and my family and I just moved from China. I heard that in the up and coming country of Britain there is more opportunity for jobs. Since my home country of China has an economical crash after the maritime trade boom in the 1500s, my family has been struggling. My husband and our two kids rode 3 donkeys all of the way here. Then in France, the place we original place we wanted to stop, they didn’t like us because we didn’t speak French (oops). SO we went onto a small fishing vessel and crossed the English Channel. We ended up in this disgusting city Manchester. The ground was coated with rats, in fact when we were in the wharf we actually thought there was a brown carpet turns out it was just a mixture of deep sewage and pests. We begin our search for somewhere to live, which of course did not turn out well considering we didn’t have any money. I promised my family that this would be the only night not the streets, or at least I truly hoped it would be. Luckily it was. The next day my children found a gold watch on the street ( I suspect they stole it) but we were all too happy with the money for food and shelter that we didn’t bother inquiring further. Now we have an apartment with a pound rent a month. I cant believe I though England would be any better than China. Here in this shack that they rent out, can hardly be paid for with my husband and I’s rent. We were hoping to educate our children, but they are left to roam the streets while we work in over heated and crowded factories during the day. The worst of it is that we can’t understand everything Gabe (our boss) says and he has no patience to repeat any of it. The words lost in translation usually cause us to get badly injured, which of course isn’t covered by the factory, or get behind on the quota of products we have to fufill every day.

My Story....

My name is Billiam Hopkins, and I was recently laid off from my job as a farm hand. I aspire to find my fortune in Manchester as I've heard so much about the wealth in the growing cities. I used think that my life was great, being a farm and all. I would wake up to the smell of wet earth and fresh crops. Now I look forward to a life in the comforts of a state-of-the-art factories. I boarded with the family that hired me, and slept in their attic. The nights grew cold, so now I look forward to a hot factory where I will pass my days and nights. I've received word that some factories work their laborers hard, but I plan to take a job in a textile factory, for manufacturing garments seems far better than railroad work. Being 24 years of age I am looking for a woman with whom I may live the remainder of my life. I've heard that the husbandless women of Manchester are abundant throughout the city. The only thing I fear is that I won't be able to fit in with those city folk. They have paved streets and skyscrapers up to ten stories tall. The whole sight of those buildings will surely astound me. And since I can't compete with that newfangled reaper, I'm a little concerned that I won't be able to keep up with those swift factory workers. Those other farmhands back in the country told stories of those city chaps - how their hands can move faster than the eye can see! I'm also concerned for my sickly parents back home. They rely on me to send them lump sums of money every year. My sister ran off with some rich French man, and my brother can't walk a straight line even if it would earn him some whiskey. Times were simpler not to long ago. When a man could earn an honest wage, without worrying about some scientists building a machine to replace him. My parents had we work every farm job imaginable, and if it weren't for the lack of work in the country, I would've gladly worked there until my dying day. I've heard that there are even steam machines that get people from one place to another. Why on earth would a man rely on a machine to get them where their legs might just as well take them. But after all of this, if I have a roof over my head and some bread on my plate, then I'll survive.

Charlotte Brogden

Hello, my name is Charlotte Brogden. My brother, as many of you may know, is Alexander Brogden. He took after my dads job as the head of the Railroads. He took the lease of the South Staffordshire line and managed it for approximately 6 years with his colleague John McClean. The South Staffordshire line was a railroad that was connected between 3 major cities in England. In addition to my brother, I am married and have 2 kids. Both named Kathryn and Marie. Back where we used to live in the farm, they helped by milking the cows and picking the weeds from their roots. As they did their work, I would work in the fields like a man and do the tough dirty work only men are supposed to do. In order to get the money I needed to pay for my kids' food and my own as well, I had to get the most high paying job I could find. About 5 years after I started working in the fields, the Industrial Revolution happened. My daughters and I were more thrilled than ever before. As a result of this revolution, I was no longer needed in the fields since they developed machines that could do the dirty work for me. With only my daughters at work and me without a job, we decided to move closer to my brother in the city of Manchester. It was a gruesome journey, passing farms and even small factories that were slowly sprouting. We reached the city within a couple of days and I went to say hello to my fellow brother. He was not expecting me to see me, so it was a wonderful suprise when I saw my baby brother excited and delighted to see his family. I told him about what was happening throughout the fields and he told me the word has been all over the news. The new cycle of how to plow crops, without keeping any fallow land, was the most amazing invention at the time. He told me he was working on the railroad, but he knew of some people down at the textile mills that could use a hand or two. They told me they didn't need that many hands, so I decided to put myself as that job and try and give my girls an education. I am so happy we made this worthy move and I would never regret my decision of moving to the city.

My Life in Manchester

My name is Amelia. I have a husband named Robert and two kids, Piper, my lovely daughter, and Benjamin, my darling son. We just recently moved to Manchester because we had to find a place to live. We used to live on a farm and it became to expensive to keep up with the new inventions. We used to pay our workers and we gave them good wages that benefited both of us, but ever since the new inventions like the combine, farming became too expensive got our poor family to keep up. It became expensive because our work at the farm was not in as high of a demand because people began to work at factories which had become more popular than I work as a maid everyday and my husband works at the factories in the city. Sadly, because of our lack of money, my kids have to be sent to work everyday as well. My daughter, Piper, has to go into town to work at a flower shop and sell flowers. My son, Benjamin, has to go into town as well and he works as an errand boy. I wish that they didn't have to work like that and I wish that I could make a difference and change it, but we don't have the right to vote because of our class, and my gender. So, in that case, we try to make their work as safe as it can be. We all have to work about 16 hours a day to try to earn enough money. We are all paid on very low wages and all of our pay checks together barely get us through the day. I see the kids at the house that I work at and I wish that my kids were as fortunate as these kids are. These kids are so lucky because they have nice food and get to stay home and learn. They have private tutors and so they get an education. They also have a wonderful home that is clean and well kept. I only wish that my parents or Robert's parents had more money and more of a status so that they could have passed some of that down so that we would be in a higher, better position than we are now. We live in a small apartment in a filthy alley way. It has rats running around and street fights constantly making a ruckus. We have to walk most of the time to work, and we have dirty clothes that we try to keep as clean and sanitary as we can. If only we were born with "wealthy" blood, then we would be in a better position. Hopefully, over time things will change, and maybe we will eventually get enough money to live in a house that is clean, and still have money left to provide our kids with an education. I feel so bad to be around these kids at work who are ever so fortunate, and then I come home and sometimes my kids aren't even home from their jobs. I can't wait for this to change.

Moving to Manchester.

Hello, My name is William Peyton and I have been asked to describe to you my life. I'd like to start with my family if that's alright with you. My first son, the oldest, he be called Jimmy he be 17 years old next month. Now my next son, Lucas, he be 14 years old in about three months. The only woman in my life be my wife Loretta. We've been married probably 18 years now. She be the love of my life, and I am glad I chose such a wonderful person. Now, my family and I have recently moved from a smaller town named Chelsea to join the rest of our friends in Manchester. Chelsea was one heck of town if I'd ever seen one. We lived on a nice farm, we would farm all day and most of all morning trying to make a living. My sons and I would go outside and do lots of hard work while my wife churned butter and prepared meals ready for us when we got home. We all have decided to move to the city because we are no longer needed. Machines are taking over our farms. People are being replaced by things with minds of there owns, and I don't like it one bit. You see, once we gotta a nice really expensive machine we don't need to do no hard work on the farm. And if we ain't doing no hard work on the farm then we got nothing else to do. The city is new, the city is interesting and by golly jee the city is different. Something I needed and my sons and wife needed. I can't wait to see how my life gone change once we in the city. What else can we do but sell our house and move to Manchester? I'm ready for some change.

Manchester-Story

Hi, my name is John and I'm a farmer living in the countryside. I am 35 years old. I have a wife, Angela, who is 25 and we have a child on the way. The reason for our relocation to Manchester is our baby. Although I make a decent amount of profit through farming, it is starting to become very expensive, especially when owning a combine. If we decide to have more children, I will have to find a job that offers more money. This way I can support a large family. This can only be achieved by moving to a big city, such as Manchester. Although I have not found a job their yet, I know there will be plenty because I have many other friends in the city who tell me about opportunities. If we choose to permanently settle in Manchester, once I have a steady income, I will provide my children with tutors. This way I can give my children an opportunity that I never had. With a proper education, they will have no problems finding a job, and supporting a family. I want my children to exceed my own success as much as possible. However, I take pride in being "middle-class." It gives me a sense of modesty-being able to not extend myself too much, but also not be labeled as impoverished.

My Story...

hello! my name is Elizabeth and I am 27 years old. My husbands name is David and I have two children, Martha and Thomas. We have always lived in the city of Manchester. David's father was a very wealthy man who inherited a great amount of money, and is in David's hands now. Before our marriage, I also lived in Manchester with my wealthy father only. My children are very intelligent and are given home schooling in our grand house each day. Me and David believe that education is very important, especially for Thomas, because he will grow up to have his own family. We have many maids in our house, and just like many other women, I like to keep my home beautiful and classic. I teach Martha the little needs as a woman so that she will be prepared to run as a house wife. From this, you can tell that we are determined to be the "old rich class." 

The Story of Samuel Slater

After reading about the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th century, I was curious as to how it began.

Samuel Slater is known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" because he brought much of the early 19th century technology to the United States, and created some of the first American factories and mills.

During the 1800s, England had many emigration laws that prevented scientists and engineers from sharing their technological secrets with other parts of the world. Every attempt that had been made towards smuggling English technology to the United States had failed. However, instead of trying to bring actual inventions, documents, or manuals to the united states, Samuel Slater memorized how mills were built, and essentially sold this knowledge to the Americans once he reached New York. He created the first cotton mill in America, and although at first it struggled to turn a profit at first, after incorporating other revolutionary technologies the mill became a huge success.