There is an early and continuing importance of immigration and migration to Holyoke. By the 1880s, Holyoke, known as The Paper City, was a booming industrial center. Immigrants from Europe and Canada and migrants from Puerto Rico came to work and made the city their home. As each group of people arrived - Irish, French Canadians, Italians, Germans, Poles and Puerto Ricans - an adjustment resulted as newcomers joined the competition for jobs and housing. Holyoke's history holds a powerful story of the development of a mill town into a booming industry. It is also a story of the immigrants and migrants who contributed to a fluid and complex set of new and established cultural patterns. Their impact on the social and cultural identity of the community is reflected in Holyoke today. This exhibit examines the reasons people emigrated from Ireland, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany and Puerto Rico to Holyoke, Massachusetts. It also features an introduction to ethnic enclaves created when immigrants and migrants moved into the city. Finally, the exhibit addresses some struggles and stereotypes as seen in Holyoke, past and present.

Change came in the 1840s as settlers moved in and New England’s roads developed.  In 1847, a group of investors from Boston purchased land in Ireland Parish and built a canal system that would provide power for dozens of mills.  Before Holyoke was incorporated as a city in 1873, Ireland Parish had a cotton mill, a grist mill, a tannery, a clock maker, a quarry, two physicians, a shoemaker, tailor, wheelwright, painter, blacksmith, one school, two churches and a well known but modest tavern.

Immigrants arriving through Ellis Island were carefully tagged with their names and the steamship upon which they arrived. Some of the immigrants to Holyoke in this photo still have tags hanging from them.

 By 1870, Holyoke was no longer the agricultural village it had been earlier.  The population had increased from 3,245 to 10,733 and it was well on its way to becoming the Paper City.  Eleven paper mills employed more than 1,000 workers producing tissue, books, forms and the fine white writing paper that would make the city famous. 

Boston Associates established the Hadley Falls Company and built a wooden dam on the Connecticut River.  On November 16, 1848 at 10 am, the gates were closed and the water began to rise. At 3:26 pm, the dam was swept away to the famous words “Dam gone to hell by way of Willimansett.”  A second wooden dam made with an apron for support, was built in 1849.  In 1858, the Holyoke Water Power Company took control of Hadley Falls Company. Holyoke Water Power Company, employing mainly Irish immigrants, began construction on a new and stronger stone dam in the 1890s and finished in 1900.  At the same time, mills were being built all around Holyoke.

 

 Irish day laborers provided the first immigrant work force in Holyoke, having arrived in 1847 to dig the canals and construct the new dam and mill buildings.  When the cotton mills became operative, many of the laborers and their families stayed in Holyoke and took unskilled jobs in the mills.  Of the several hundred first employed in the mills, at least half were Irish, while the remainder were recruited from Ireland Parish and surrounding towns.

 

 

 

The Irish began immigrating to America during the 1820s and by the 1850s the number had grown to almost one million.  In addition to the potato famine of 1846, the Irish left their native land for other important reasons.  Some were seeking religious freedom and escaped the exploitation of British rule, which included tax collectors and the enforced payment of tithe to a church in whose doctrine they did not believe.  Immigrants came from Connaught, County Mayo and County Clare, Dublin, Cork and Kerry counties in Ireland. Pictured here is the McCarthy Family.

After the Irish, the second largest immigrant group into Holyoke was French Canadians, most of whom came from the 1870s to the 1880s.  The population in Canada had increased to where cultivatable land could not support the population.  Also, American manufacturers paid more than their Canadian counterparts.  Early French Canadian immigrants sent back enthusiastic accounts of America along with more money than their families had ever seen.

 

The Holyoke Transcript Telegram of April 5, 1873 reported:
“Frenchmen are coming into town ‘thicker and faster and more of ‘em’ according to the officer stationed at the Connecticut Railroad depot who said there were fresh arrivals with every train.”

 

German families came to Holyoke in the 1860s.  They were textile workers from Rhineland and Saxony, highly trained in hand weaving and experienced in making woolens for the German market.  With the increasing use of machines to produce woolens in Germany, they sought opportunity for their skills in America.  Although represented by only a handful of their countrymen in the 1850s, the flow of German immigrants rapidly increased after 1865.  August and Hermann Stursberg, owners of woolen mills in Germany, bought half interest in the Germania Mills.  German spinners and weavers found an easy niche in Holyoke because the Stursberg brothers brought them to work and Germans began making a community in South Holyoke.

The first Italians came to Holyoke in the late 1880s. Italians established confectionary and fruit stores between 1882 and 1900.  The shops were owned by Rigali, Musante, Campagna, Buglia, Equi, Luchini, Marano.  Most stores were on High or Main Street. Frank J. Equi, pictured above in front of his coffee and sandwich shop, on Main Street, was in the business for 80 years.  He began working at the shop with his father when he was 16 years old.  In 1975, he sold the business to Bernard Cawley of Feeding Hills to continue the restaurant business.

Polish immigration began after the close of the Civil War and the end of the 1863 Polish Revolt for independence.  Among the first of the Polish settlers were Czarnecki, Zielinski, Symasko, Szewczynski, Niedzielski, Rutka, Jurasz, Dusza, Swiatek, Slajda, Frodyma.  Polish immigrants to Holyoke were mainly young adults, either unmarried or with children too young to work.  The one sure place Polish immigrants could find work was the Lyman Mills.

Portuguese immigrants first arrived in Holyoke in the early 1900s, drawn by the work in the textile mills, and at times, to escape an oppressive military draft law in Portugal.  Some worked at Mackintosh and Sons Company, Farr Alpaca and at the American Thread Company.

By 1941, the streets downtown were full of first, second or third generation immigrants.  Anita Marcotte Healy, French Canadian, remembers that “Main Street was a hustle and bustle place with a good ethnic mixture of businesses- there was a Greek, a Jew, French and Polish.  The Irish were mostly up the hill and the Germans on Park Street.” (Photograph taken by John Collier, 1941; courtesy of the Office of War Information, Library of Congress)

 

 

Puerto Ricans are Holyoke’s most recent group to enter Holyoke, beginning in the late 1950s.  Unlike earlier immigrant groups which came to Holyoke during periods of expanding population and economy, Puerto Ricans migrated to Holyoke when the existing population was decreasing and industrial jobs were harder to find.  (Photo taken by Bill Ravanesi)

 

The company tenements were models for their day.  The Holyoke Transcript described a block in South Holyoke as “having a handsome front of pressed brick, double circular windows, three stories high with French roof, and twenty-eight rooms with a dining room, pantries, a kitchen, with most of the rooms finished in oak graining…”  

As more immigrants and migrants flooded into Holyoke, the town became a city and industries were popping up all over Holyoke.

 

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Holyoke's industries were built from entrepreneurship using immigrant and migrant labor. By the 1880s, Holyoke, known as the Paper City, was a booming industrial center. Not only did immigrant labor from Ireland contribute to the booming paper industry, but groups like the French Canadians, Polish and Germans worked in textile factories producing cotton, wool and silk.  

Workers in the mills were on the job at 5:00 am. At 6:00 am they could stop for breakfast for an hour. Dinner came at 12:15 pm for 45 minutes. At 6:30 pm, workers got another 45 minutes for supper. They often worked until 9:00 pm for six days a week.

There were no legal regulations of hours or conditions of labor in Massachusetts before 1874. All immigrant groups to some extent shared the problems of low wages, long hours and poor working conditions. Holyoke’s average wages were below that for the state.  In 1876 a mass meeting of unemployed marched upon City Hall to demand of the Board of Aldermen the building of a new sewer which would supply work. “We did not come to this country to starve,” cried one (Transcript, September 16, 1876). In the fall of 1878, women who had supported families on their earnings as rag sorters in the fine writing-paper mills had to ask the city for assistance when their hours were reduced.

 
Chemical Paper Company, located on the third level canal, 1887. The company was formed by the four Newton brothers and was the largest paper mill when it was built in 1880. Though originally founded as the Newton Company with Moses and James Newton in 1876, it was eventually jointly established by the four brothers, including John and Daniel, into Chemical Paper Company. In 1913, however, Clifton Crocker and Frank McElwain purchased the plant and created the more efficient Crocker-McElwain Company.

 

 

 

 William Whiting, made his first appearance in connection with the paper business in 1858, as clerk in the Holyoke Paper Company. His first attempt at paper-manufacturing was in connection with the Hampden Company. When the old Holyoke Company disposed of its establishment Mr. Whiting ceased his connection with it, and having sold his interest in the Hampden, in 1865 he organized the Whiting Paper Company, pictured here in the 1890s.  In 1879, it was the second largest paper manufactory in the world, with a capacity of nearly eleven tons per day.

A state law of 1867 stipulated that all children under 15 years of age, no matter what background, must be sent to school at least three months out of every year under penalty of fine to be collected from the employer. A survey conducted in 1869, however, revealed general disregard of that law by employers. In the 151 mill towns where child labor was used, between 5,000 -6,000 children under 15 were employed in mills and shops, of whom 60% could not read or write. Early labor regulations governing female and child labor were critical in shaping the textile industry, but did not, however, affect the paper industry because of its vast predominance in adult male labor. Photographs from the Collection of Lewis W. Hine.

American Thread Company workers, c. 1920s.  In 1911 there was a general business expansion for the American Thread Company. During this time, capacity increased to 2,000 employees and wages increased by 5%. The American Thread Company was increasingly tied to the interests of the English Corporation owning them, the English Sewing Cotton Company. In the general business expansion of 1916, the capacity of the mill was enlarged and 2000 employees were given a 5% wage increase; when business fell off after World War I, wages were cut.

Clinton Silk Mills, c. 1950s. Joseph Hampson founded a textile factory at 58 Canal Street. In 1938, he deeded the property to his son, Walter, and Walter named the business Clinton Silk Mills, named after his first born son, Clinton. Their silk was used in the production of parachutes during World War II, along with the products of cotton and synthetic cloth used for lining in suit coats. It is currently the site of Hadley Printing Company, who purchased it in 1976. Photograph courtesy of Anna Hampson and Family.

 

 

 

Eugenie Cote was born in France in 1904. Her parents immigrated to Holyoke when she was seven years old. When she was fourteen, she went to work for the Skinner Mills and worked there from 1918 to 1940. She is standing at the warping machine at William Skinner & Sons Silk Manufacturing Company, c. 1926. She said, “There were always quite a few openings [for jobs]…There was one time that work must have been slow or something because the ones that had their husbands working, they got laid off for a while but now I don’t remember if that was during the depression or what. I worked steady.” 

The spinning department at the Farr Alpaca Mills on Jackson Street in Holyoke employed Stella Baran and Julia Werbiskis Gardner as doffers.  At the Farr Alpaca dye house women were paid $12-14 a week.

 

The Lyman and Farr Alpaca mill closings were part of what might be called the deindustrialization of the New England textile industry. Between 1920 and World War II, Massachusetts lost nearly 45% of its textile production jobs. But after 1940, a large infusion of military contracts, promising unprecedented profits, stabilized the regional industry and led some manufacturers to reopen deserted plants. During this period, however, nearly 200 mills were shut down. Others drastically reduced their scale of operations. The decline of the New England textile industry had lasting consequences, not simply for the communities directly affected, but for the entire region and the rest of the country as well. Competition for jobs increased due to the layoff of over 100,000 textile workers; consequently, wage rates were reduced. From 1950 – 1960, manufacturing workers’ wages in New England declined 16% relative to the rest of the nation. The high unemployment rate in New England, largely stemming from textile plant shutdowns, as compared with most of the rest of the country in the 1950s and the insecurity and demoralization caused by the unemployment, seriously debilitated the region’s labor movement.

he first Holyoke local assembly of the Knights of Labor was organized in November 1882 with 14 members. The activities of the Holyoke Knights were directed toward the passage of a weekly payments law, shortening the hours of the paper mill workers and arbitration of strikes. The Knights of Labor got involved in the paper mill workers’ campaign to shorten their weekend hours. Hours of labor were much on the minds of workers in post-Civil War Massachusetts. A law passed in 1874 stated women and children under 18 years old were restricted to working 60 hours per week. That had effectively shortened the workday for all textile mill employees, but the paper mills, which employed far fewer women and children and in less strategic jobs in the overall manufacturing operation were hardly affected at all.

During the early 1890s wage and hour disputes stopped the textile machinery at the Farr Alpaca Company, Lyman Mills and Merrick Thread Company. In 1899, the strikers at Farr Alpaca, mostly French Canadian women, accepted a company offer to revise the fine system and increase wages by 5%, but not before they had formed a union. Within a few weeks, the Polish and French Canadian weavers at Lyman Mills also established separate unions and joined operatives in other departments in seeking to restore the 1896 wage schedule.

Anna Sullivan was a leader in the organizing drive of the Amalgamated Textile Workers Union during the 1930s. The union brought the first 40 hour week to Skinner in 1936; she was hired by the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) in 1938 as a full-time organizer, and she eventually became the vice-president of the Massachusetts CIO: “I organized in Easthampton, Ludlow, door-to-door and leafleting factories. I had three types of leaflets - - in Polish, in French and in English. The people came out and waited to get their leaflet…From that, we built up. We came up a whole lot compared to what we ever had.”

Other Holyoke Businesses

Holyoke & South Hadley Falls Ice Company (above) and Holyoke Ice Company (below) which delivered to Ashley Pond, were important resources for the citizens and businesses of Holyoke. Photographs courtesy of Mark Larrow.

 

Vollert’s Dairy started before the 1900s and progressed for years, delivering milk to Holyoke. Their dairy was located at Dwight and Northampton Streets.  Photographs courtesy of the Holyoke Public Library History Room.

The world of the Holyoke's working class embraced more than the workplace. Outside the mill existed church, family, benevolent societies, and other institutions which enriched working class life and the culture of Holyoke. Within these institutions workers defined themselves and created a number of distinct cultural worlds. One cultural world was a world of responsibility based on the duty to family inculcated from an early age. Here young workers developed the means and values necessary to maintain families of their own. Before entering this world, some even lingered for a time in the raucous, hard drinking world of saloon culture. The immigrant and migrant impact was particularly strong in contributing to the social and cultural character of the community, reflected in much of Holyoke today.

Companies held events to boost morale and provide another opportunity for recreation. Pictured here is lunch time concert for employees of Worthington, formerly Deane Sump Pump Company.

The Irish families that came to America and settled in the Holyoke area in the 1600s and 1700s were mostly from the north of Ireland and were Protestant. The First Orthodox Congregational Church in Ireland Parish was formed by Reverend Dr. Lathrop in 1799.  The building was originally a meeting house. 

“A library is as much a part of the intellectual life of a community as its schools, and should be supported generously as part of our educational system. Within the se walls you will find authors devoted to literature, arts, and science, and they are free to anyone who will ask. We can say to the citizens of Holyoke you have only to ask here and you will find knowledge to make your life useful and happy.” William Whiting, President of the Library Board from 1870 – 1910.  The opening in 1870 of a town library on the block surrounded by Essex, Cabot, Maple and Chestnut Streets, with some 2,500 books available for the 300 subscribers made it possible for more people to read books, though reading solely for pleasure was considered unworthy. If good books were not furnished for the young, they might read novels and sensational newspapers!

Annual regatta at San Sauci Club House, located north of Holyoke on October 11, 1890. The Canoe Club, located just above the dam,  incorporated in 1888 and consisted of a boat house that could hold 6-8 canoes. The club moved several times, with the final club house built at Smith’s Ferry in 1903, where it remains today.

Holyoke’s third generation found social life more unified than it had been, but there were still some separation between Protestants and Catholics.  Catholics were excluded fairly consistently from membership in the Canoe Club, pictured above, Irish, French Canadians and Polish organized outing clubs with headquarters at Hampden Ponds beyond the reaches of the city. Photograph courtesy of Heritage State Park.

There were over 20 clubs and organizations associated with the Skinner Coffee House, a local settlement house.  Clubs at the Skinner Coffee House included: Women’s Club, French-American Club, Association for the Blind, Italian Women’s Club, Homemakers Club, Negro Women’s Club, Polish Women’s Club, Children’s Dramatic Club, Junior Reading Group, Polish Folk Dance Group, Children’s Glee Club, Ukrainian Women’s Club, Quilt Club and the Dancing Club. Along with providing entertainment through pageants and musical revues, organizations created a community through regularly scheduled meetings and luncheons. Many girls joined the same clubs years after their mothers’ involvement, indicated stability of the organization and strong family and ethnic ties. Above is the Italian Women’s Club.

League of American Wheelmen in Holyoke. In 1896 Charles E. Walker opened up his Sporting Goods Store on High Street. The first big bicycle boom hit the country at the same time. His grandson, Roy Walker Jr. took over running the store. When he pedaled the streets of Holyoke, he usually carried a set of wrenches – for the unexpected adjustments. Up until the 1920s, bicycles were vehicles used mostly by adults. By the 1950s, bikes were used mostly by children and the industry was fighting to stay afloat.

Many immigrants saved their money and took the trolley to Mountain Park. “One time …..all the factories had a play at the Casino at Mountain Park. You might have heard how they had shows up there at one time at the Casino, it was down the hill. And every factory in Holyoke, that is American Thread, the Alpaca, Skinners and I think the other one was the American Writing, National Blank Book.” Female, French-Canadian second generation who worked in Skinner Mills.

Annie Kane, Irish born, said of Mountain Park, pictured above: “I went into the Hadley [Thread] Mill to work at 14 for $6 a week, six to six, as a doffer. We had to all pitch in. Out of $6 I got fifty cents – I used to save that to go dancing. That was big in them days – you could go to Mountain Park for five cents.” 

Holyoke’s history holds an even more powerful story than the development of a mill town. It is a story of cultural identities that began with the first wave of immigrants to our fair city. The impact of immigrants and migrants on the city of Holyoke and our continuing identities remains particularly strong today. Many Americans who come from immigrant ancestors no longer identify with a particular ethnic group. Others strongly identify with their ethnic heritage. This exhibit examines the identity of Holyoke’s past, present and future as well as reflect on what cultural identities remain in today’s Holyoke.  

Immigrants who traveled thousands of miles over the Atlantic Ocean were taking a huge risk in surviving the voyage and being able to find employment to improve their quality of life. Some immigrants clung to their heritage while others began to adopt the traditions and beliefs of their new city – Holyoke. Many Americans who have come from immigrant ancestors no longer identify with a particular ethnic group. Others strongly identify with their ethnic heritage. Rather than defining themselves by their ethnicity, an increasing number of Americans identify themselves by their occupation, generation, cultural lifestyle or social mobility.

Florencio Morales says the “… community must understand Puerto Ricans as Puerto Ricans… Yes we are Americans, but we don’t look like Americans. Americans must look for what the Puerto Rican has to offer." Residents of the area express sentiments of their neighbors: "They are strangers, facing pretty much the same things other immigrants confront: isolation from the rest of the community because of their language, their strange ways, their poverty and their tendency to stay together.”

 

Some people identify themselves by their religious beliefs and practices.

Photograph of the inside of the Skinner Chapel at the United Congregational Church

 

Some people identify themselves by the company they keep.

Photograph courtesy of Shirley Morrison.

 

“The constant mixing of cultures in America has created a very diverse, yet highly integrated society that is nearly impossible to truly classify.  A classification of a person’s race, be it Irish, French and Polish, would simply make them White.  A person that is Spanish, Black and Taino (Puerto Rican) would be Latino.  There is nothing wrong with these generalizations, but does a Latino farmer produce Latino crops, or a White painter create a White painting?  A person of non-Latino origin can very well make Latino art.  No person is bound or limited to their culture.  That is one of the great things about our melting-pot society.” Caleb Colon, born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. 

 

Elizabeth Towne, editor of The Nautillus.

 

 

“The Irishman, whether Irish born or Irish by heritage, has long believed that it was the good Saint Patrick who was principally responsible for his individual gift of faith. With this in mind, the Irish and the descendants of the Irish, honor and perpetuate the memory and the spirit of this great and saintly man. Sustained by the profound, yet simple, teachings of Saint Patrick, the Irishman has been able to surmount oppression and depression, has learned to respect his fellow man and his beliefs, share in his hope for the future, and always has he demonstrated his generous loyalty to his adopted country. In this tense and turbulent world of today, with hate, prejudice and fear eating away at the heart and soul of mankind, it is indeed fitting and just that we unite in order to honor God, pay tribute to the memory of Saint Patrick, and salute our truly great and wonderful United States of America.” Timothy Sullivan, President of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, 1968.

 

Photograph courtesy of Shirley Morrison.

 

 

Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey, born in Holyoke, MA: “Having one Latino parent and one white parent would be a tricky endeavor anywhere but in Holyoke, where the lines between those worlds is so divided, the balancing of those two realities has always been a complicated line to walk.  Add to that a non-religious and politically radical upbringing, an Ecuadorian – not Puerto Rican- dad and a non-Irish mom from Ohio, well, I didn’t fit squarely into any of the boxes laid out before me.  This identity I’ve grown up with has resulted in feeling a deep connection to Holyoke and all its communities as well as a deep isolation from them at the same time.  In truth, I feel like I can hold and embody all the dynamics at play in this city in my own life, in my own body, and in my own mind and flow – or stumble – between them with some degree of integrity and grace.  I think this dance between connection and isolation, between belonging and alienation, has everything to do with my artwork.  This city and my relationship to it continues to be a fundamental driving force of my creative endeavors."