Documentary Review: Whitin

I first learned about the documentary Whitin through a Blackstone Heritage Corridor newsletter upon its release about five months ago in November 2024. The documentary was edited, written, and produced by filmmaker Heather Riley of North Grafton with significant input from members of the Whitin family. The documentary is about twenty-seven minutes in length and currently hosted on the ValleyCAST YouTube channel.

Most of the information presented in the documentary was familiar to me and would be to anyone who has read my past posts about Whitinsville or is local to the area. The documentary covered the modern history of the village, including the collaboration between blacksmiths James Fletcher and Paul Whitin; the matriarchal dominance of Betsey Fletcher Whitin over the town, her four sons, and their mills; and the growth of Whitin Machine Works into an industrial force. The documentary touched briefly on the immigrant communities who came to work in the mills along with their religious beliefs, although focus was given to Village Congregational Church and St. Patrick’s Catholic Church with no mention of the other religious organizations.

All people interviewed for the documentary were clearly authorities on Whitinsville history. Professional experts included park ranger Kevin Klyberg of Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park and history professor Dr. Robert Forrant of UMass Lowell gave excellent information in their short segments. Dr. Forrant’s segment was shortened to the point where I had to pause the video in order to read the label with his name and occupation. More time was given to interviews of Whitin descendants and older, lifelong residents who held the same opinion: paternalistic Whitin family control over the village was a good thing, even when fully acknowledging that the factory owners treated workers just as benevolent feudal lords treated their serfs in the European middle ages. In fact, the documentary displayed an article headline from a newspaper, likely from the Boston Sunday Post in 1929, declaring Whitinsville a “Place Where Capitalism, Feudalism, Communism Go Hand in Hand”. Based on my recent research on post-medieval villages, I was hardly surprised.

The documentary skillfully combined text slides, photographs, interviews, drone footage, and somewhat overly dramatic music into a quick-moving history lesson. A few spelling errors in the burned-in captions and font errors on the slides were the only technical issues I saw. My key issue with the documentary is that it was “just another Whitinsville video”, which bolstered rather than questioned a common narrative. While the unionization of workers after World War II, sale of the mill to White Consolidated Industries, and divestment of all Whitinsville properties was touched upon briefly near the end of the documentary, the language in this section took on a victim-blaming mentality, especially towards residents forced to go on welfare when the Whitins ended subsidized heating and other resources. The village righted itself as part of the larger Blackstone River Valley community, but a sense of worship towards the Whitin family remains for some.

If you need a quick overview of Whitinsville history, enjoy looking at vintage photographs, or want to commiserate about the “good old days” in the village, this is the ideal documentary for you. However, if you are a supporter of workers rights and unionization, or at least prefer a well-rounded view of history, you will come away feeling frustrated. Perhaps the documentary was supposed to be thirty minutes or less, but if time was not a limiting factor, a slower editing style with more interviews by out-of-town experts and residence who were not as pro-Whitin might have prevented the impression of bias.

Abby Epplett’s Rating System

Experience: 6/10

Accessibility: 7/10