Growing Up in a Massachusetts Mill Town

My grandmother Vernetta "Vernie" Gertrude (Jones) Barnes was born in Lawrence, Essex County, Massachusetts in 1892. Her parents were newly-arrived immigrants, having come down from New Brunswick, like countless other immigrants, in search of jobs, better living conditions, and prospects for their children’s futures. When they arrived, Lawrence was a booming textile center, a leading producer of woolens. Her father, Jared, was a 30-year old farmer, strong and accustomed to hard work, which he readily found upon his arrival. Lawrence mills were reaching their pinnacle of production, and treatment of the mostly foreign-born workers became ever-more unacceptable, as companies continually pushed their employees for higher output.

The woolen and cotton mills employed over 40,000 persons, about half of Lawrence's population over age fourteen...Office workers averaged about $8.76 for a full week's work. In addition, the cost of living was higher in Lawrence than elsewhere in New England. Rents, paid on a weekly basis, ranged from $1.00 to $6.00 a week for small tenement apartments in frame buildings which the Neil Report found "extra hazardous" in construction and potential firetraps. Congestion was worse in Lawrence than in any other city in New England; mill families in 58 percent of the homes visited by federal investigators found it necessary to take in boarders to raise enough money for rent...Of the 22,000 textile workers investigated by Labor Commissioner Neil, well over half were women and children who found it financially imperative to work in the mills. Half of all the workers in the four Lawrence mills of the American Woolen Company were girls between ages fourteen and eighteen. Dr. Elizabeth Shapleigh, a Lawrence physician, wrote: "A considerable number of the boys and girls die within the first two or three years after beginning work . . . thirty-six out of every 100 of all the men and women who work in the mill die before or by the time they are twenty-five years of age. Because of malnutrition, work strain, and occupational diseases, the average mill worker's life in Lawrence was over twenty-two years shorter than that of the manufacturer, stated Dr. Shapleigh...  Early in January 1912 I.W.W. activities focused on a dramatic ten-week strike of 25,000 textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. It became the most widely publicized I.W.W. conflict, acquainting the nation with the plight of the unskilled, foreign-born worker as well as with the organization's philosophy of radical unionism. 

(Joyce Kornbluh, Lucy Parsons Project Bread and Roses: The 1912 Lawrence textile Strike, webpage (www.lucyparsonsproject.org/iww/kornbluh_bread_ roses.html : accessed June 2008); citing: Kornbluh, Joyce, Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology, (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing, 1988).)

Family stories say that Vernetta was not able to continue her education after graduation from the Emily G. Wetherby School in 1906 at age 14, and was obliged to go directly to work in the woolen mills. If she did, it was only for a short while. And she was very lucky to have survived, given the above-cited statistics!

The 1910 census tells us that by the age of 18, she had moved up to a position of bookkeeper in a grocery store, so we know that she was out of the horrible working conditions of the mills, and would have only witnessed, not participated in, the momentous Bread and Roses strike of 1912. The advantages of speaking English and looking like a Yankee, plus her own intelligence and drive, must have helped her tremendously. When her wedding was announced in 1913, she was described as “a popular operator at the local telephone exchange,” a job that she enjoyed. A story has been passed down in the family about her eavesdropping on a steamy conversation, and giving herself away by letting out a heartfelt sigh. This was risky behavior for a telephone operator!

I always attribute any brains in our family to my grandmother Vernetta. She surrounded herself with books, was very involved in the community and didn't give a hoot about housekeeping (she left that to my poor mother, eldest child!) Best of all, Grandma was a genealogist and passed the passion down to my mother, my aunt and me.

Imagine all of the lives wasted in those mills! I consider myself lucky to be alive when I read about the evil conditions there and I thank my grandmother for understanding that it was her continuing self-education that kept her out of them.

Treasure Chest Thursday - Georgia's Glass Jar

Certain items in my possession

were passed down to me with a higher-than usual degree of decorum. This cut glass jar with sterling lid is one of them. My mother told me, when she presented it to me with a flourish, that it is the only surviving item from my great-grandmother, Georgianna (Hagerman) Jones (1868–1932). This makes a girl sit up and take notice. Your mother's mother's mother and one item remains? You bet I was listening!

My mother kept marbles in it, crystals, just like I do. She kept it in a secretary desk that my father brought home "from Sam's" one day. Sam's was an antique/second hand shop used that he used to frequent, owned by a man named Sam Castano. Sam and Pops became best buddies, despite the fact that each was taught in early childhood to despise the ethnic group of the other. When my father grew up in East Boston, gangs of Italian kids used to fight gangs of Irish kids. That's the way it was and still is: new immigrants fighting slightly older immigrant groups for a piece of the pie. According to angelic Pops, he never partook in these activities, and actually, I sort of believe that he didn't, for his bark was far worse than his bite. Yet, it scarred him and left him wary of Italians in general. I'm sure Sam felt the same way about the Irish. So when Pops and Sam first had dealings with each other it must have been against each's better judgment! Yet, Pops continued to frequent Sam's, and they became very close friends. I learned as a small child that whenever Daddy brought a treasure home, it must have come from Sam's. I still remember the day that the secretary arrived, mostly because my mother was pleased with it. Generally she could think of better ways to invest the family income than in antiques! But on that day she was ecstatic and immediately began loading her favorite keepsakes onto the shelves.

Like much of the content of my mother's house, the secretary passed down to my brother Tim and family. With three small children, the secretary's function changed from curio display to videotape library, and after a few years the scratched and battered secretary was banished to his barn. I asked him one fine day if I might adopt its warped and mildewed self, and Tim obliged, so we carried it back to Shrewsbury. It stunk badly of mold, and aggravated some hearty allergic reactions. We had it refinished and finally I was overjoyed to place Georgianna's glass jar upon the shelf once more.

Georgianna and her husband Jared Smith Jones (1860–1943) were born in New Brunswick, Canada. They were both descended from Loyalists who had fled the brand new United States at the conclusion of the American Revolution. A century later they were part of the mass immigration into the US in the late nineteenth century, in search of jobs and a better life. They went to Lawrence, Massachusetts and Jared worked variously in the textile mills and driving a team of horses. I know that they had very little money. I wonder if, and want to believe that the glass jar belonged first to Georgia's mother, Louisa (Carr) Hagerman.

My grandmother Vernetta was Georgianna's only daughter. Vernetta had four daughters. The matrilineal line died out in my Aunt Louise's line and in my mother's line, since my sister and I do not have daughters bearing daughters. I have inherited the glass jar purely by chance. But I want this jar to remain a matrilineal, mitochondrial DNA kind of hand-me down. So, when I die, it will go to one of the female descendants of either my Aunt Anne or Aunt Abbie (twins) both of whom have daughters with daughters with daughters! Though she may not know it, some little girl had an ancestor who cherished a piece of cut glass and kept it safe to pass down, just for her. What good is studying family history if you don't bring it to life for younger generations? Maybe, in some small way, this jar will do just that.