Today’s Schwamb Shares entry travels outside the mill building to explore some of the cultural life in the small emerging Crescent Hill neighborhood, a section of today’s Arlington Heights established in 1872, several blocks west of the Charles Schwamb mill. A vibrant mix of artisans, recent immigrants, and Boston professionals settled into the new suburban … Continue reading Edward Schwamb and the Crescent Zouave Fife and Drum Corps

Tenth in an occasional series of Schwamb Shares As we write this in July 2020, the temperature is nearing 100 degrees outside and certainly is higher than that in the Mill. In the nineteenth century, the third floor must have been a hot place to put in a ten-hour day (typical summer hours in Arlington … Continue reading Tin Pan Alley on the Mill’s Third Floor

Ninth in an occasional series of Schwamb Shares The Old Schwamb Mill’s archives include 78 accident reports completed between 1915 and 1930. The reports were submitted to the Federal Mutual Liability Insurance Company of Boston, Mass., the insurance company covering the Clinton W. Schwamb Company’s workers in accordance with Massachusetts Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1911. … Continue reading What We Can Learn from the Mill’s Accident Reports

Eighth in our occasional series of Schwamb Shares Visitors  who have toured the Mill’s downstairs front office may have learned that the Mill’s current phone number 781-643-0554 is essentially the same one that the Clinton W. Schwamb Co. had as early as 1921 -- 0554. Here’s the earliest phone bill in the Mill’s archives. Clinton … Continue reading Telephone Comes to the Mill

Seventh in an occasional series of Schwamb Shares During the course of a tour of the Old Schwamb Mill objects such as tools, machines and historical artifacts are the main attraction. A less evident, parallel display of paper items affixed to the Mill’s walls also deserves our attention. visitors with eagle eyes can spot political … Continue reading Paper Ephemera: Windows into the Schwamb Mill’s Work Culture

Sixth in our occasional series of Schwamb Shares. Jacob Schwamb (1815-1881) was the oldest of six Schwamb brothers who immigrated from Germany’s Rhineland to the Boston area between 1838 and 1857. Like many of his brothers, Jacob was a woodworker. Two of his brothers, Charles and Frederick Schwamb, cofounded the Schwamb picture frame mill in … Continue reading Jacob Schwamb’s Divine Initiative: Co-founding The First Zion German Evangelical Lutheran Church

Fifth in our occasional series of Schwamb Shares A volunteer does not lead many tour groups through the Old Schwamb Mill before hearing the question: “Where is the water wheel?” Youngsters fresh from reading about the mills of old, Arlingtonians puzzled by the distance between the Mill and the Mill Brook, mill enthusiasts visiting from … Continue reading Where’s the Water Wheel?

Fourth in an occasional series of "Schwamb Shares." In Jacob’s Bitzer’s "History of the Mills along Sucker Brook," read at a meeting of the Arlington Historical Society in 1924, he says that the Schwamb factory’s business gradually shrank through the later nineteenth century. He adds that Clinton and Louis Schwamb, grandsons of the founder Charles … Continue reading The Largest Frame the Schwamb Mill Ever Turned

Third in our occasional series of "Schwamb Shares." One just didn’t expect to see President Warren Gamaliel Harding in the Old Schwamb Mill. But, there he was, all 40 inches by 47 inches of him in a larger-than-life painted image on cloth, rolled up and stuck in one of the wood moulding racks on the … Continue reading The Mill’s Warren Harding Banner

Second in an occasional series of "Schwamb Shares" Weeks from now, when events have run their course and we are free to roam the New England countryside, a day trip to visit the Plimoth Grist Mill in downtown Plymouth, Mass., is a highly recommended, especially for enthusiasts of early American industrial sites. The waterwheel at … Continue reading Big Wheel Keeps on Turning, Grind Stones Keep on Grinding: A Brief History of the Plimoth Grist Mill Site