This Jackdaw is the appropriate reading level for upper elementary, middle school and high school students reading below grade level. It contains the same, ready-to-use, hands-on historical documents as the original, upper-level Jackdaw; most of the documents are actual-size replicas. The fully reproducible Broadsheets provide historical background for understanding the documents.

This Jackdaw offers students a story of ingenuity and daring; of exploitation and reward, as America struggled for economic independence and political stability through industrialization. Hands-on documents and historical illustrations — steam engine and grist mill plans, early mill regulations and wages, letters of Samuel Slater and Eli Whitney — plus classroom-size maps of the canal and railroad systems and a photo-poster on the “Contributions to Technology” all add to students’ understanding of this exciting era. Historians: Miriam Butts and Patricia Heard, adapted by Muriel L. Dubois. The contents of this Jackdaw feature:

• The Other American Revolution
• The Role of Inventors in the Industrial Revolution
• The Millworkers’ Story
• Improving Transportation

• Agreement to the Incorporation of the Middlesex Canal, 1793.
• Letter from Samuel Slater to employer, William Almy, 1795.
• Oliver Evans’ automated gristmill, 1783, and Columbian steam engine, 1804.
• Letter: Eli Whitney to Decius Wadsworth, Commissary of Ordnance, 1814.
• Two pages from the Thomas Hurd Mill wages book, 1827.
• Amoskeag Mill regulations, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1859.
• Mechanic’s certificate award to Amos Dow by Amoskeag Mills, 1871.
• Broadside, “Enlarge the Canals!” probably New York, 1832.
• Maps showing principal canals, highways and railroads, 1840-1860.
• “Steamship Savannah/The First Ocean Steamer,” Boston, 1854.
• Nine shares of stock in the California Petroleum Co., 1865.
• Poster: Contributions to Technology.