Learn the History of Slatersville In This Emmy-Winning Documentary Series

The village of Slatersville as viewed in 1904. (Courtesy of the National Park Service/Old Slater Mill)

Editor’s note: This story has been updated from a previous version published in 2022.

Very few filmmakers can say they devoted ten years of their career to a single subject.

Even fewer can say that subject was the town where they grew up, but for Christian de Rezendes, a documentary filmmaker based in Rhode Island, there was no better topic to explore.

The North Smithfield native has spent the past decade filming “Slatersville: America’s First Mill Village” about the small, Blackstone Valley town that gave rise to the Rhode Island-style factory system. The three-season series premiered on Rhode Island PBS in 2022, and the second season is now available to view on Tubi.

“I’m a filmmaker who happens to be from here, and I happen to love it,” he says.

Local filmmaker Christian de Rezendes (Courtesy of Christian de Rezendes)

De Rezendes first got the idea to make a film about Slatersville in 2005 when the old Slatersville Mill was in danger of being demolished. At the time, the mill (founded by the same family that opened Slater Mill in Pawtucket) was in poor shape, and many residents worried the building’s history would be lost.

“It was on its last leg,” de Rezendes says. “There was a tree growing out of the fourth floor window. It was in really, really tough shape. It looked like it was going to cave in.”

The building was eventually saved, and de Rezendes’ project was interrupted by a move to New York. When he returned to the area, the building had been turned into apartments, but its history still fascinated him.

“The building had a magnetic pull to me. I’m relieved to know that as I made the film, I wasn’t the only person interested in it,” he says.

What originally started out as a feature film quickly turned into a much larger project, and is now an eleven-episode series covering almost 240 years of Rhode Island history. Season one starts with the town’s founding by John and Samuel Slater and continues until 1915. Season two, which premiered earlier this year, covers the village’s purchase and revival by Henry P. Kendall and its sometimes difficult history through the 1900s.

“He comes in and really flips the village. It was in a real place of dark turmoil for years. It’s his second mill to build his mill empire, and he loves the place,” de Rezendes says.

While Slatersville enjoyed relative peace, the Great Depression years gave rise to the Great Textile Strike of 1934 in other parts of Rhode Island. To set the scene, de Rezendes obtained footage of the riots that took place in nearby Saylesville and juxtaposed the images with the modern-day village.

“You had 4,000 or 5,000 people gathering on the streets of Lonsdale Avenue chucking rocks at the National Guard. Some of them were ten and twelve years old,” he says.

Season two also covers the World War II years and Slatersville’s socioeconomic climate through the 1950s. While those years are frequently remembered as a time of prosperity, de Rezendes says the documentary flips that narrative on its head by spotlighting the racism that was also rampant during the decade. During his research, he uncovered photographs of prominent citizens in blackface and interviewed descendants of the Curlisses, a Black and Native American family who had lived in Slatersville since the 1800s.

“There’s a lot of history that’s been shoved under the rug that nobody wants you to look at,” he says. “It’s been a powerful journey.”

The series will conclude with season three, which de Rezendes says covers environmental remediation in the area and history up to the present day. Last year, the series was recognized with an Emmy Award from the Boston/New England chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for outstanding musical arrangement and composition, and it was nominated for an award for outstanding documentary.

Over the course of the project, de Rezendes explored historical documents and properties and interviewed more than 140 residents about their experiences living in Slatersville. The most meaningful part, he says, was meeting the many individuals connected to the town, especially the older individuals with memories to share. Since he started the project, thirty-one of the people he interviewed have passed away, making the series a record of their voices.

“I would never have gotten to know so many wonderful people in my town, their loved ones, historians, people overseas, and the hundreds of people who are connected to this project,” he says. “That to me has been the tremendous privilege of a lifetime.”

Along with Slatersville, the series explores other places and topics connected to the Slater family, including Clouds Hill in Warwick and the Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen that helped educate African Americans in the years following the Civil War.

“To me, it’s the story of America through the prism of Slatersville,” de Rezendes says.

The first and second seasons are available to stream for free on Tubi. The first season is also available to stream on ripbs.org.

To learn more about the project or donate to its completion, visit firstmillvillage.com.

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