SACO — A new permanent exhibit at the Saco Museum offers visitors a glimpse into the life of a local mill girl from the 1840s.

Making Her Way: Mill Girls of Saco and Biddeford opened last week.

The exhibit shows aspects of the life of a mill girl outside the mills, said  Education and Program Manager Camille Smalley.

Girls left their family farms to work at the mill as early as age 12, and came from around Maine and other parts of New England and Canada. They were required to live in boarding houses, which were located within site of the mills.

In the display room at the museum are two beds, shoved together, giving a sense on how crowded a boarding house bedroom was.

The girls slept two to a bed, six to a room.

“There was no such thing as privacy in the boarding house,” said Smalley.

Mill girls worked in local textile mills 12 hours a day Monday though Friday and half a day on Saturday. On Sundays, they had to go to the company’s church.

In their free time, they may have gone to the shops in downtown Saco to spend some of their wages. Some examples of items that the girls would have purchased, such as hair combs, are included in the exhibit.

“It gives a sense of how they lived. It’s so different from how we perceive life now,” said Smalley.

Visitors can touch different textiles and try on fashions from the 1800s from a dress up trunk. They can also read fictional letters showing correspondence between mill girls and family members back at the farm and examples of popular fiction from the 1840s, which often portrayed sensationalist tales of mill girls.

The exhibit fills a room on the second floor of the museum, which had been displayed as a bedroom featuring Federalist-style furniture for many years.

“It was high time for a change,” said Saco Museum Director Jessica Skwire Routhier.

Instead of having the exhibition room completely barred off to visitors as it was in the past, Routhier said she wanted to have part of the room a hands on experience.

Routhier said that the room focuses on an important part of the local history that contrasts with other display areas that show a more affluent part of society.

The exhibit is a precursor to the museum’s new, upcoming permanent exhibition, Making History; Art and Industry in the Saco River Valley, which is scheduled to open May 29, 2010.

“This exhibit is the first step in rethinking our permanent collection,” said Routhier.

The Saco Museum is located at 371 Main St. For more information, call 283-3861 or go to sacomuseum.org.

— Staff Writer Liz Gotthelf can be contacted at 282-1535, Ext. 325 or egotthelf@journaltribune.com.