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 Schwamb, rebuilt the business after taking over in November 1904. Bitzer’s version of events is borne out by the account books, now in the Mill’s archives. These show a steady increase in frame and moulding orders, employees, and investment in the plant and its equipment from 1904 to 1929. In 1908, Charles Schwamb and Son was incorporated as the Clinton W. Schwamb Company, and the name was added to the office safe.

Given these positive changes, it is not surprising that the following item – a demonstration of the Mill’s new vigor — appears in a trade publication of the day, The Wood-worker.

Finding this article online via Google Books, we at the Mill asked ourselves: Who was this frame for and does it still exist?

We hope to find this frame for several reasons. A hand-carved round frame of this size and shape seems more likely to be a fixed architectural feature than a moveable picture frame. Whether the “well known Boston firm” was the customer or one of the many frame shops that ordered from the Schwambs, we suspect that the frame found its home in the Boston area. Plus…don’t we have the order books in the archives?

We do – and have not yet found our answer. Two volunteers have read and re-read the orders from September 1916 to November 1917 without finding the frame. It should stand out: it was a circle, a distinct size, and a special order. We estimate the 1917 wholesale price to be between $7.00 and $9.00 — possibly more since it was a special order that would take a workman off the usual production.

Might there be other clues in the account books? Unlike the chronological entries in the order books, cash books, and transaction journals, the ledger shows transactions under their accounts (customer and supplier names, but also categories such as shipping and delivery). Thanks to a volunteer’s indexing of the ledgers some years ago, we were able to quickly look up any categories that might have involved the giant frame’s special transport by automobile described in the article. But nothing stands out under these accounts.

OK – could such a frame even be turned on the Mill’s basement lathe? Our current turner David Graf has produced 6 foot by 4 foot black walnut ovals on the downstairs lathe. But this circle was larger, nearly 7 feet in diameter. By our measurements, the basement lathe has enough clearance for a frame this size – have a look at the picture below.

Nevertheless, at this point our search was at a standstill – until we remembered an item of graffiti near the lathes on the first floor.

Our best reading of this is

The largest frame turned here to date June 12. 1917.
(81 1/2 outside 3 1/2 wide 2″ thick by J. M. Sousa.)

This seems a very close match to the frame described in the article, despite a slight disagreement over its diameter (if we are reading the damaged message correctly). The June 1917 date leaves time for the news item to have been written and mailed (perhaps by a pleased Clinton or Louis Schwamb, likely readers of The Wood-Worker). However, even with that specific date as a point of reference, no account book entries near that date reveal the frame or activity that might relate to its manufacture or transport. (A rare COD delivery via Adams Express, a few days later in June, to frame shop owner who was also a wood carver appeared promising – but he was based in Providence, RI, and his purchases were consistently for mouldings and ovals).

We remain puzzled by our failure to find the order for this frame in the records – but we are eager to try other resources. The Arlington Advocate might have published a similar article, perhaps with more detail (we await the reopening of Robbins Library to have a look at the Advocate on microfilm). Electronic searches in the historic Boston Globe through the Boston Public Library have not yielded any news of the tremendous circle.

We still hope that the frame exists and look forward to finding it and sharing the news with the Mill’s supporters.

A few words about the man who turned the frame, Joe Sousa.

Joseph Marier Sousa worked at the Schwamb mill from 1910 to 1918 (his tenure is also written on the wall of the Mill, above his turning accomplishment). He started at 17-1/2 cents an hour but was soon raised to 21 cents an hour, bringing home $10 to $12 dollars on a typical week, working Monday to Saturday, 9-1/2 hours a day. This was the middle range of pay for Schwamb workers in the 1910s; less than the moulder operator, more than basic workmen hauling and stacking boards. A note in the time books says he lived at #43 Calvin St. Somerville, a triple decker which still stands. Like other employees at the time, Sousa was sometimes reimbursed for expenses in addition to his weekly pay, though we do not know what the expenses were – possibly deliveries, tools, or work supplies that he bought himself.

Sousa’s 1917-era draft records show that he was born in Terceira, the Azores, on June 3, 1891, making him 26 when he left the Schwambs. With black hair and hazel eyes, he was of medium build and height. Though married and listed as a citizen of Portugal, he may still have chosen to serve in the Great War. Like the giant frame that he turned, his story is to be continued!

Special thanks are due to archives volunteer Rupert Davis for his careful reading of 1917 account book handwriting and to Vivian Kalber, whose past indexing work has made quick searches of the Mill’s ledgers possible.

Dermot Whittaker, Schwamb Mill Preservation Trust, Inc.

This period of museum closures due to the COVID-19 is a challenge for non-profits like the Old Schwamb Mill. Your contribution in support of the Mill, however modest, is much appreciated at this time. We look forward to reopening soon!

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 second floor. Given his perennial ranking as one of America’s worst presidents, perhaps Harding might warrant an even more obscure storage space, but as an artifact of the early twentieth century, the object is one of the Mill’s prized collection items.

Produced by Arlington Heights artist Henry W. Berthrong (1844-1928), the eye-catching image no doubt originally featured on the end of a large barn, the side of a roadside shed, or possibly even the Mill itself. It would almost certainly have been produced for the 1920 presidential contest between Republican Warren G. Harding and Democrat James M. Cox (Harding won Massachusetts and the election in a landslide). Before CNN campaign ads or even highway billboards, large campaign posters placed candidates’ faces before the voters. Berthrong specialized in such large-scale political advertising, sending his portraits across the country. In 1892, Boston reporters visited Berthrong at work on a gigantic Benjamin Harrison poster, so big at 20 feet x 15 feet that it was completed outside on Berthrong’s Arlington Heights barn.

Born in 1844, in Mumford, New York, Berthrong served in the Grand Army of the Republic for nearly four years in the 5^th Corps, Army of the Potomac, taking part in many battles. Sketching the White House on leave, Berthrong’s artistic ability was once noticed favorably by Abraham Lincoln, but Berthrong’s other talents brought him more lasting Washington, D.C., fame.  He had a noted career as one of the very first professional baseball players with the Washington Nationals. Playing center field and catcher without gloves, helmets and chest protectors, he eventually broke every finger in both hands. Berthrong was the idol of American youngsters and a celebrity. An unparalleled sprinter, he held the base-running record for some 40 years and was never beaten in twenty-six one-hundred-yard dashes. He also gained fame rowing with the championship Potomac Four in 1869.

Marrying the niece of the Secretary of the Treasury in 1873, he began a career in the United States custom service that was to last over fifty years and took him to Florida, Nevada, Boston and, for several years, to Cuba. The Boston posting was the longest and allowed the Berthrongs to move to Arlington Heights in 1875.

Active in local community affairs, Berthrong was a Mason and an officer in veteran’s organizations, playing first violin with the orchestra of Arlington’s Francis Gould Post, No. 36, of the Grand Army of the Republic as well. One son was a noted athlete for Arlington High.

The Harding banner appears as late as 1969 in the Mill’s photo collection. The best photo, part of a series that the Schwamb Mill Preservation Trust produced as it sought to save the Mill, shows the Harding banner behind owner Elmer Schwamb as he points to a mirror in a black walnut frame with gold leaf liner. The description from 1969 reads, “Behind Mr. Schwamb is a campaign poster portrait of Warren G. Harding, used for years as a dust screen for the small gold leafing room beyond.”  

How the Schwambs acquired the Warren Harding banner portrait is not documented. Letters in the Mill’s collection, newspaper articles from the period, and even the corporation’s board minutes suggest that the Clinton W. Schwambs (husband and wife) were active Republicans with a perspective common among business owners of the day. Clinton Schwamb wrote an approving letter to Governor Calvin Coolidge (Harding’s running mate) on his handling of the Boston Police Strike. Oral history and photographs record that the Schwambs of the period sometimes hung banners and bunting on the property in connection with town celebrations, the return of veterans, and the business itself.

While neither the sketch nor the president are Mt. Rushmore material, perhaps the large Harding likeness gave Schwamb workers their own special view of American politics, up close and personal.

Doreen Stevens, Board of Directors, Schwamb Mill Preservation Trust, Inc.

This period of museum closures due to the COVID-19 is a challenge for non-profits like the Old Schwamb Mill. Your contribution in support of the Mill, however modest, is much appreciated at this time. We look forward to reopening soon!

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.

Located one hour south of Boston in the heart of the Plymouth Center Historic District, the Plimoth Grist Mill is a 1970 reproduction of the grist mill that was built on this historic site in 1636. It is a working mill that uses water power to mill organic corn into tasty, freshly ground cornmeal that is sold to local restaurants, bakeries, breweries and distilleries as well as to visitors. The mill replicates the first American grist mill built in Plymouth, one year before the grist mill built by Captain Cook on Mill Brook, at the foot of what is now Water Street in Arlington Center.

In 1636, John and Sarah Jenney were granted permission to run a mill on Town Brook in Plymouth and to take a portion of the corn that was brought for grinding as their payment or “toll.” The Jenneys were Pilgrims who came to Plymouth in 1623 from Leiden, Holland, via the ship Little James. Their mill was a vast improvement over the process of grinding corn by hand in wooden mortars. John Jenney died in 1644 and the grist mill on Spring Lane in Plymouth remained under Jenney family control until 1683.

During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the mill’s owners included Stockbridges and Churches. Charles Stockbridge purchased the mill in 1683 from John Jenney’s heirs. He was the owner of another mill in the nearby town of Scituate. Charles Stockbridge purchased the mill structure from the Jenneys but the Town of Plymouth retained rights to the mill privilege. Charles Stockbridge entered into an agreement with the town whereby he agreed to “maintain a self-sufficient corn mill.” He had to hire a miller “who would grind the Town corn well”— an agreement that underscores the ongoing importance of corn to the descendants of the Pilgrims.

The town also paid Stockbridge “eleven pounds in silver” to raise the height of the mill dam. Stockbridge also agreed to “make a watercourse for the herring to pass over the dam into the pond.” Today, the mill is the centerpiece of an annual spring festival along the shores of Town Brook which draws thousands of people to witness herring traveling up the fish ladder to their breeding grounds.

Charles Stockbridge did not live long after his purchase of the Jenney Mill and his widow sold it to Nathaniel Church of Plymouth. Although little is known about Nathaniel Church, his brother Benjamin was a celebrated military figure who, in 1716, authored an influential book on military tactics, Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War. During the 1720s, the Churches ceased to be the sole owners/operators of the old Jenney mill and the property’s ownership was split up amongst numerous grantees.

In 1847, the ancient Jenney grist mill, a remarkable relic from the “Old Colony” days of Plymouth, fell victim to fire. Surviving for over two hundred years, it had supplied Plymouth with corn meal until almost the very end of its existence—a remarkable record given its wooden building and the ups and downs of the southeastern Massachusetts economy through wars , financial panics. Nor’easters and hurricanes.

After the fire, the mill site became host to other industrial concerns that were dedicated to manufacturing rather than food production. Indeed, during the second half of the 19th century, Samuel Loring conducted a factory on this site that made nails, tacks, brads and rivets made from iron, copper and brass. The buildings of Loring’s factory on Spring Lane are clearly shown and labeled on the 1879 George H. Walker & Co. Map of Plymouth Village. In 1886, Loring’s son-in-law John H. Parks became a partner in the company.

The 1886 Massachusetts report entitled Statistics in Manufacturing and Industry states that Loring’s 125 employees worked a ten-hour day and were paid between ninety cents and one dollar per hour. Reportedly, its roster of workers included a number of children. The report notes that for the most part Loring and Parks’ machinery was not up-to-date; however, a new fast and efficient cutting machine had been recently installed. By the late 1880s, the buildings of Loring and Parks’s enterprise extended beyond the original Jenney parcel to include a 30’ x 100’ slate-sheathed building, a two-story wood framed office building, and several warehouses. Evidently these were the buildings that were taken down during the 1960s as part of an urban renewal project that eventually paved the way for the Jenney Grist Mill Museum, later the Plimoth Grist Mill at Jenney’s Pond.

The present Plimoth Grist Mill was built in 1969-1970, the same time frame that the Old Schwamb Mill transitioned from working factory to living history museum. The present structure opened to the public in 1970 as an industrial museum that for a dozen years operated independently. Plimoth Plantation, the remarkable living-history complex that was created during the late 1940s, acquired the mill in 2012. (In the case of both the Plantation and the Old Schwamb Mill, the considerable financial resources of the Henry Hornblower family were instrumental in getting these visionary nonprofits up and running.)

Starting in 2013, the Jenney Grist Mill was renamed the Plimoth Grist Mill at Jenney’s Pond, thus honoring both the site’s Pilgrim progenitors and its Plimoth Plantation lease holder. The mill became one of five attractions now sheltered by the Plantation’s protective umbrella, attractions that include the 17th century English village, Wampanoag Homesite, Craft Center, and Mayflower II.

Currently, the Plimoth Grist Mill’s tour begins at the mill’s second floor which is at grade with Spring Street. The second floor features two massive 200-year-old French Buhr millstones. Buhr is mined in pieces in the Marne Valley of Alsace Lorrain region of France. The mill’s bed and runner stones are 54” in diameter. Grinding demonstrations by interpreter millers Matt Tavares and Kim Van Wormer illustrate how corn is ground into finer and finer pieces. The 2,500 pound moving or runner stone is capable of grinding up to a ton of corn per day.

Downstairs, large wooden gears inside the mill spin the runner stone in the upper level of the Mill. The large wooden gears are spun by the 14-foot diameter wooden water wheel located adjacent to an exterior wall. Working together, these gears translate the vertical turning of the water wheel to the horizontal movement needed to turn the runner stone.

The tour of the Plimoth Grist Mill includes working models of water wheels and a gift shop where sacks of cornmeal can be purchased along with books, collectibles and “I’ve been through the Mill” T-shirts. The Plimoth Grist Mill is within walking distance of Plymouth Center shops, restaurants, museums and the Mayflower II. In good weather, with concerns of the moment behind us, it will be an ideal day trip that will help visitors envision the water wheel that once powered our own Old Schwamb Mill.

Learn more about the Plimoth Grist Mill here.

Edward W. Gordon, Director of Museum Programs, Old Schwamb Mill

This period of museum closures due to the COVID-19 is a challenge for non-profits like the Old Schwamb Mill. Your contribution in support of the Mill, however modest, is much appreciated at this time. We look forward to reopening soon!

First in an occasional series of “Schwamb Shares”

Hello to all our friends and supporters. Since we are all staying at home for some weeks to come, and the Mill is closed, our directors, consultants and volunteers will be sharing items of interest about the Old Schwamb Mill, mills in general, and upcoming activities, exhibits, and research question. We thought we’d start with this Influenza Bulletin from the Massachusetts Department of Health:

• 

Our copy of this notice, pasted on the sliding door to the glue room, is the worse for wear. Workers passed through this door carrying frames and tools dozens of times a week for over fifty years after we believe this notice was posted, just as visitors do today.

We do not know who posted the bulletin, or why, but its relevance in the fall of 1918 would have been obvious. Massachusetts was in the midst of the influenza pandemic, with Boston and nearby communities hit hard from September to November of that year. Schools and stores were closed, hospitals overwhelmed, and tents erected to handle patients with severe flu or pneumonia. This notice included recommendations for individuals, householders, nurses, and workers to reduce the likelihood of infection.

You can read a contemporary version of the Influenza Bulletin published in the Winchester Star on October 4, 1918, bottom of page 3.

Some of the bulletin’s advice will sound familiar: Walk to work. Wash your hands. Cover you mouth with a handkerchief if you cough or sneeze. Avoid crowded places. Allow no visitors, and do not go visiting. Stay in bed if you have influenza. Nurses were advised, “When in attendance upon patients, wear a mask which will cover both the nose and mouth. When the mask is once in place, do not handle it.” Because gauze was scarce (in demand both for the flu and the war overseas) nurses were told to change the mask every two hours and boil it before reuse.

Some of the Department’s good advice came with a high tone. “Keep away from crowded places such as ‘movies,’ theatres, street cars”; “A common towel is only for filthy people.” In the age of take-out, we have more confidence in our public eateries than the Department of Health did in 1918: “Keep out of dirty restaurants”; “Soda is unnecessary. Why run the risk of infection from a dirty glass?”

Other advice would have been familiar to Americans of the 1910s: Open your windows at night (with extra “bed clothing” for cold nights). Walk in the fresh air and sunshine daily.

So was the Mill affected by the influenza pandemic of 1918? It is difficult to say. For the year 1918, we do not have time and hours books naming each worker week-by-week. The Clinton W. Schwamb Company ledgers show that payroll went down for several weeks in October of that year – the worst month of the flu for Boston – but payroll often varied at the company week-to-week, especially in wartime.

We do know of a future Mill worker who survived the flu that year. Peter Jerardi lived with his family Arlington and came to work at the Mill when a sophomore in high school, from 1920 to 1922. He knew the other men who worked there on a first name basis and eventually turned frames. In an oral history with Patricia Fitzmaurice, he described surviving the influenza in 1918 in his family home on Forest Street:

We lived there since 1904. I was born in Boston and they moved out almost immediately. And my youngest sister who’s still alive was here in that house. And Dr. Sanger, he had a home just about across from Brattle Street. …During World War One we all got influenza and pneumonia. And he came up to see us. They said we both were very sick, and hers developed into pneumonia and she went to Symmes. I stayed at home and he came up and … there was no medicine, just chicken soup was the only thing they give us … to [mellow] it but … we were all pretty sick. We made it.

We look forward to seeing all of our friends and supporters in good health soon. Until then, watch for the next installment of Schwamb Shares.

Dermot Whittaker, President, Schwamb Mill Preservation Trust, Inc.

This period of museum closures due to the COVID-19 is a challenge for non-profits like the Old Schwamb Mill. Your contribution in support of the Mill, however modest, is much appreciated at this time. We look forward to reopening soon!