Short answers, pulled from the story.
Blackstone Valley is known as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. Samuel Slater opened the first successful water-powered cotton mill in America at Pawtucket Falls in 1790, powered by the Blackstone River, and industrial manufacturing spread from this point northward to Worcester and then across the nation.
William Blackstone (originally spelled Blaxton) was an English settler who arrived in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1623 and became the first European settler of present-day Boston in 1625. In 1635 he relocated to Rhode Island and built his home on the river, in what would become Cumberland, giving the river his name.
The Blackstone Canal opened on the 7th of October 1828, when the packet boat Lady Carrington arrived in Worcester as the first vessel to complete the trip. Construction began in 1825 and cost $750,000, which was twice the original estimate.
The Blackstone Canal closed in 1848 after the Providence and Worcester Railroad began parallel operation in 1847. Boston merchants had opened rail lines to Worcester and Providence in 1835 specifically to recapture trade that was flowing down the canal away from Boston, and rail ultimately outcompeted water transport.
Congress designated the Blackstone Valley a National Heritage Corridor in November 1986. The corridor encompasses twenty-five towns and cities across Massachusetts and Rhode Island, running from Worcester to Providence along the historic route of the Industrial Revolution.
The original Native American name for the river was "Kittacuck", which meant "the great tidal river". The Kittacuck was plentiful with salmon and lamprey during pre-colonial and colonial times.