Research

Museum Artefacts

Search our collection of 3,000 artefacts
Explore our vast artefact collection dedicated to preserving the history of industrial woollen mills and the mill workers of the Mississippi Valley. We have over 3,000 artefacts ranging from textile machinery to pay stubs.

Mary Lettner Textile Research Centre

Explore our collection of over 2,000 publications

Explore our comprehensive research library named after the MVTM’s first curator, Mary Lettner. This library is home to over 2000 books, periodicals, sample books, and research notes of the textile industry and the Mississippi Valley.

The Almonte Gazette 

The Mississippi Valley Textile Museum is pleased to make The Almonte Gazette archive available online. This invaluable resource was digitized in 2012, creating an archive of searchable content online.

The Almonte Gazette has been an integral part of the town of Almonte’s history and its contents can now be mined online for everything from council meetings to genealogical confirmation of births, deaths and marriages within the community and environs.

The Museum acknowledges and thanks the Documentary Heritage Communities Program – Library and Archives Canada – whose support made this project possible.

Woolen Mills of the Mississippi Valley

The textile industry played a significant role in the founding and development of the Mississippi River Valley in Ontario. A great tributary of the Ottawa River, the Mississippi River had a significant number of mill industries built on it, and the Valley was responsible for the economic development of the area. In fact, Almonte became the capital of woollen industry in Canada and was known as “Little Manchester”.

Mississippi Valley Mill Owners (Biographies)

The mid to late 1800’s was a busy and exciting economic time in the Mississippi Valley especially for the textile industry. Mill ownership was not for the faint-hearted; prospectors and investors competed to establish their textile mills and maintain business interests. With that came a lot of movement, with textile mills being built or changing hands at an almost regular frequency!