Great-great grandma Georgie was a legend in our family. My grandfather adored his grandmother, so we grew up hearing stories about her temper and stubbornness, always told with great love and amusement. The stories Grampy Phil shared were funny, but I wish he'd also told us how incredibly strong, determined, and hard-working Georgie was. She didn’t have an easy life, so if she was hot-headed or stubborn (a family trait many of her descendants view with pride) she had every reason to be. In 1901, she became a single mother when her husband died, and she had to go back to work in the mills to support her family. “Earning a Living” is the prompt for Week 6 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge, and I can think of no better story to share than hers.
Georgianna Duchaine was born in Chicoutimi, Quebec in 1860, and was the eldest child of David Duchesne and Sophie Bellay. Like many French-Canadians in America at that time, they were initially migrant workers, traveling to work in New England factories for part of the year before returning to Canada. The Duchesnes/Duchaines permanently settled in Westbrook, Maine in 1881. In working-class immigrant families like theirs, all the children contributed. They worked in one of the many factories that littered the banks of the Presumpscot River. Georgie didn’t marry until she was in her 30s and probably worked until then, most likely in one of the textile mills close to her home in Scotch Hill, a neighborhood comprised of Pike St., Dodge St., Webb St., and Walker St. The neighborhood offered affordable rentals for the factory workers, and her family was living there by 1891, according to the city directory. Living in the other half of the duplex was her future brother-in-law, Lazare “Ben” Laviolette. Perhaps his brother Adam lived with him, or maybe he was a frequent visitor and that’s how he and Georgie became acquainted. She married him in 1893, and the couple had five sons before Adam’s untimely death from liver cancer in 1901. The youngest was born the day before he died, and Georgie was too weak from childbirth to attend the funeral. Adam’s body was carried into the bedroom so she could say one last goodbye to him.
With no property, and nothing but a small life insurance policy from Adam’s job at the railroad, the 40-year-old widow went back to work to support herself and her babies. Her mother Sophie, widowed in 1895, was already living with her and watched the children while Georgie worked long hours at the Haskell Silk Company.
It’s impossible to talk about Georgie’s job without first understanding a bit about where she worked. The Haskell Silk Company is not as well-known as the S.D. Warren Paper Company or the Dana Warp Mill, but it’s an interesting piece of Westbrook history. Finished silk was expensive to import, but raw silk from Japan was much, much cheaper. American textile manufacturers saw a business opportunity, and some converted their mills to silk mills. James Haskell was one such individual. He moved to Maine from Massachusetts and purchased a textile mill, the Westbrook Manufacturing Company. In 1874, he switched to silk and founded the Haskell Silk Company. His wasn’t the first silk mill in the United States, but it was the only one in Maine, and became one of the leaders of the American silk business. Because the process of turning silkworm cocoons into silk was difficult, time-consuming, and required specialized equipment and multiple separate spaces, most mills specialized in one area -- either opening the silk bales, spinning, dyeing, weaving, or finishing the fabric. Haskell Silk was one of the only mills that did it all. They made everything in-house and didn’t stick solely to producing the fabric they became renowned for. They also produced ribbon, trimmings, and four brands of thread, including their own Haskell Silk Company brand. The company was constantly innovating and expanding. By 1889, they were operating 75 looms. After James Haskell died in 1890, his son Edwin became General Manager and expanded the business even further. He built a new site up the river in 1901, which employed over 300 workers. Georgie reentered the workforce at the right time as jobs were plentiful at Haskell Silk. Their new state-of-the-art site had a separate dye house, over 250 looms, and electricity. When a coal shortage in 1918 forced most of the local mills to close temporarily, Haskell Silk was one of the few able to remain open.
When silk mills first opened in the US, they employed mostly women and children in all areas of the business. They had small, quick hands, and generally took up less room than men, so they could pack more workers into tighter quarters. They could also get away with paying women and children much lower wages. Many of these workers were immigrants. By the time Georgie reentered the workforce, silk mills were employing more men, but used them primarily as weavers. Women and children still held the bulk of the positions, including throwing, winding, spinning, warping, and picking. Georgie worked as winder. She was responsible for running a machine that transferred raw silk from hanks to bobbins in readiness for spinning. The machine she worked on would have been similar to the one pictured.
The mills were hot, noisy, and dangerous places to work. Workers stood on hard floors and toiled away for long hours – generally 10-hour shifts 6 days per week. Employees had few rights, but the foundation to change that was being laid during Georgie’s time. She was still working at Haskell Silk when the 54-Hour Law was enacted in Maine in 1916. The law limited the hours women and children could work to no more than 9 hours most days. Those 16 and under were no longer allowed to work before 6:30 AM or after 6:00 PM. The cotton industry vehemently opposed this law and campaigned against it. Once it was enacted, rumors were rife in the newspapers that factory owners planned to retaliate by reducing wages. To get ahead of the rumblings they must have heard on the factory floor, the Haskell Silk Company and the Dana Warp Mill issued a joint statement in the newspaper that wages at their mills would not be affected by the new law.
Though factory life wasn’t easy, there is some evidence that Haskell Silk may have been a bit better to their employees than some of the other factories -- at least until they ran into financial problems towards the end of the 1920s. Their employees didn’t participate in the strikes that plagued the textile industry in 1912 and 1913. On March 26, 1918, Haskell Silk announced in the Evening Express (Portland, Maine) that they were giving all employees a 10% raise. “The increase is wholly voluntary on the part of the mill management, no demands for a raise having been made by the employees. Throughout its long business career in Westbrook the Haskell Silk Company has never had any labor troubles.” That was true. In fact, Haskell Silk employees didn’t strike until 1927, when 125 weavers walked out after being laid off for a week and given a pay reduction upon their return.
There is also evidence that the company helped their employees financially with loans and may have helped them purchase land at a reduced cost. In 1900, Haskell Silk bought up 60-acres of property which included the areas of Mitchell St. and Chestnut St. Georgie eventually purchased a home on Mitchell St. from the Haskell Silk Company. Among the ephemera my grandfather collected is a receipt for a $400 interest-free loan issued to Georgie by the Haskell Silk Company on April 29, 1912. She had 75 months to repay it at $5/month. I believe this interest-free loan was taken out to either help her purchase her home, or to pay off debts so she could obtain a mortgage. Haskell Silk conveyed a deed to her on Mitchell St. for “$1 and other considerations” on January 10, 1913. That original $400 loan may have been part of the “other considerations” -- perhaps a rent-to-own agreement, or the money she needed for her downpayment. On April 5, 1913, she conveyed the deed to Gideon Lacombe, who became her mortgage lender. He loaned her $800 at 6% interest to be paid back at the rate of $100/year for 8 years. She paid it off early. On April 4, 1919, the loan was discharged. She outright owned her property – a truly remarkable feat for a single mother at that time.
By the 1920s, the silk industry was struggling due to unstable raw silk prices and the introduction of a new synthetic fabric, rayon. Many silk mills switched to producing the cheaper fabric. Haskell Silk introduced it on a small scale in 1923. By 1928 they were manufacturing over 1,000,000 yards of rayon/year and it comprised most of their business. When Edwin Haskell died in 1930, the Haskell Silk Company closed its doors. It was one of the longest-running silk mills in America.
We have no way of knowing exactly when Georgie stopped working at the Haskell Silk Company, but it was between 1920 when she was still listed as a winder in a silk factory on the census, and 1930 when she wasn’t. In 1920 she was 60 years old and became a grandmother for the first time. I can’t imagine that she worked too much longer after that. Her three sons who survived childhood and World War I were all working by then. I like to think Georgie retired around that time and let the boys she supported for all those long, difficult years take care of her instead.
Sources
Picture of winding room from library of congress: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b24763/
Picture of Haskell Silk Company from Walker Memorial Library:
Newspapers.com articles are behind a paywall:
What an interesting, well-written story! Thanks for sharing.