Two Interviews: March 11, 1985 and April 11, 1985
New Perspectives in Concord's History
Concord Oral History Program
William Bailey, Interviewer.
I'm Edwin M. Edwardsen and I was born on Punkatasset Hill on November 7, 1895. My father's name was Andrew Edwardsen and my mother's name was Evelina Otina Helsher. My mother was born in Concord and my father was born in Loiten Norway. He was born in 1867 and he was about 15 years old when he came over here so that would be about 1882.
...And your mother was born in Concord as I understand it just about a year after her mother and father came from Norway because I think Martin Helsher came in 1873 and it seems to me that she was born in 1874. Do you have any idea where in Concord that would have been?
No, they never mentioned that. Well they were born in Concord but they never mentioned where. But I think they might have been born up on the farm because I'm not sure he had that farm or not or where he was working.
...I can help you out a little bit on that because I know in 1880 he was still working over where Lars and Rudolph Petersen were. They all came at the same time and they worked as I understood it for George Wheeler on Fairhaven Road. So I think that's probably where they were and that's probably where your mother was born.
They didn't actually tell us where they were born because we never asked I presume. I know the rest of us were born in Concord. I was the first one and I was born up on Monument Street up on Punkatasset Hill because my father was working for William Hunt as a laborer.
...What kind of things would he have done on that farm?
There were vegetables and hay, asparagus and strawberries and all that stuff. I don't know about potatoes but a lot of the farmers did plant potatoes. They planted so they would store away a lot of their vegetables that they grew in the summertime in their cellar to keep for themselves for the winter. My father used to do the same thing. All the farmers had asparagus.
...Do you have any idea what life was like for him in Norway? Were his parents farmers? Did he ever talk about that?
He never talked about it, but I think they were. His sister married August Graf and they come over to this country but I don't know what time.
...What was her first name?
I'm not sure but I think it was Anna.
...The Grafs were here for a while but I couldn't figure out what happened to them.
Well, he worked for Harvey Wheeler at the harness shop. He was the caretaker around the place. Then he got kind of homesick and they had five children while they were here so they went home and took over the father's farm.
...The Graf farm?
Yes, his father's farm. Bergen and Loiten were two of the towns they came from.
...Did your father have other brothers and sisters who came to Concord?
Just the two. That is why my father wanted to go back, I think it was in 1910 [it was 1907] when Norway and Sweden were going to separate and get their independence, but he never had the money. He promised when I was growing up that we're going back to Norway when they get their independence but we never got there. My mother and father were married November 10, 1894 and I was born the next year on November 7, 1895 and then they come right along.
...You had a big family, didn't you?
There were eight of us.
...Were most of you born up there at the Hunt farm?
Oh, no, I was the only one born up there.
...Before we move away from the Hunt farm can you tell me if you know whether there was a little cottage that you lived in that was on the farm.
No, it was on the hill on the other side of the road.
...Did you ever have a sense that your father liked Mr. Hunt and was Mr. Hunt good to him? Sometimes these farmers exploited the workers and then other farmers were very good to them.
Oh, no, my father liked working there but he wanted a farm of his own. He bought the farm on Barrett's Mill Road in the spring of 1896.
...Do you know who he bought it from?
No, I don't.
...That's where Sidney Wanzer lives now, right? That's a beautiful farm!
But none of the buildings are there that we used to live in. My father sold it to John Gates who was from Nova Scotia in 1904. He came here with his father the year before that. They did grafting and they went around and grafted apples and pears because that was their trade in Nova Scotia. He wanted the farm because my father was getting kind of anxious to leave here so he boarded with us. Then my father moved to Concord Junction at that time.
...So you really didn't live on the farm but about seven or eight years? But I guess that you had a sister Mary and a brother Paul that were both born there.
It was Dorothy May that was born there.
...Did he raise strawberries and the same kinds of things?
Strawberries, asparagus, potatoes, corn, and turnips.
...And was there a lumber mill right near you?
There was a saw mill just before you got to my house. He ran it by water and he had a grist mill there because there is a canal that goes underneath the road. It's all grown up there now.
...Who is he?
Newton D. Gross. At that time when I was a young kid, he used to saw slabs from the trees and he piled them up and then in the summer time when he was through cutting all that lumber, he'd be running out of that, he'd saw that up and sell it to the people in Concord. I used to ride with him with the slabs. He lived right across the street from where I was. I'd be over there all the time because they didn't have any children.
All the farmers around there would bring their corn or wheat or whatever to the mill and he would grind it up for them. A lot of people would bring other stuff to make grain out of because he had a big stone and you run it around on top of the grain and grind it up.
...That's amazing because I didn't realize that they were still doing that as late as 1900.
He run it even after we left the farm there. Well, he was getting kind of old and he was kind of gradually giving it up. He never did anything to the grist mill building and that all fell to pieces so it's nothing but junk. I used to go over there a lot with him when I didn't go to school and I would do things like pick up sticks. He treated me as if I was his son, really. Of course, I really didn't understand it then but after I got a little older I began to put two and two together. His wife was a Wheeler.
...Did you see much of your grandfather, Martin Helsher when you were growing up?
When we moved to West Concord, we were a little older and my father had a horse and wagon, and he'd pile us in there and we would go to my grandfather's. He'd work on the farm. I was getting so that I could weed asparagus. I got 25 cents a row and they were about half a mile long and I had to carry the weeds up to the end.
...What are your memories if you have any of Martin Helsher in terms of his personality?
He was a rough person. My father used to tease him a lot. He was an old grouch. It was awful hard for us to get along with him.
...Your father worked for him as a hired hand and that's how he met your mother, isn't it?
Well, I think so. But that's when he went over to Hunt's farm because I was born over there and he married my mother before that.
...It seems to me that one of the Helsher girls married an Italian barber.
That was Martina.
...I would have thought that that wouldn't have set too well with old Martin.
No, it didn't but she wanted the man anyway. She married Frank Genevese.
...And then another one Maria or Wilhemina married Christian Olsen.
Yes, and he worked on the farm too and he met her there. The farm was up in the Westford Road area. A family by the name of Ford lived there but I don't know just who bought the farm whether they did or not. Then somebody else bought the place and they lived down lower and built a house and barn down there because they have horses.
...But then Christian Olsen and his wife I have also living on Barrett's Mill.
Yes, they had Corey's farm. They sold it to Corey.
...So they were very close neighbors of yours.
You see when we went to school, Dave Mason up on Strawberry Hill Road had a big farm there but he drove the barge to school. They called it a barge and it was pulled by a horse.
...John Macone showed me where the Mason farm was just yesterday because he was showing me where his farm was. So he must have been living there just at the same time of course when you were a little boy.
He was because we went to school all on the same barge. They picked them up and come down and picked us up and Ben Polk lived up where Dr. DiMare owns now.
...Gladys Clark too?
Gladys Clark was up on Lowell Road but there was another Clark that lived up further and she might have gone to school on that barge so there were two barges.
...And were there Olsen cousins about your age that you grew up with?
Wilhemina was one of the daughters and she was about the same age as my sister. My sister Dorothy was born July 1897. She didn't have a very healthy life and when she was going to school she had a serious operation so she really couldn't go back to school again.
I didn't have much education either because I left school when I was 14 years old.
...So you didn't even start high school?
I didn't start high school; I went to work at the Strathmore Worsted Mill.
... Did your family join the Norwegian Methodist Church or the Trinitarian where Ole Thorpe was minister?
No, that was on Lang Street, wasn't it.
... But before Lang Street there was that church that was right on the corner of Thoreau Court.
When we were on the farm, I went to Sunday School at the Trinitarian Congregational Church on Walden Street.
...So you didn't go to the Norwegian Methodist?
No, we didn't go up there. I don't know for what reason they went to the Trinitarian but it seemed all the Helshers went to that church. Thorpes did. Everett Thorpe is a good friend of mine and we've known each other since we were kids. I think he passed away a short time ago.
...No, he's still living. I interviewed him too.
That brings up something else again because we didn't keep in touch with the Grafs when they went back but he did. So every once in a while he'd say he got a letter from Norway so that's the way I found out. Then when my mother passed away, I sent them a clip from the paper and I wrote to tell them about how she passed away and so forth. I got a letter back but it was in Norwegian because when the kids went back to Norway they learned Norwegian but they forgot all about English.
...So then your family when you were 10 or so or a little older then that I guess moved to Concord Junction?
We moved over there in 1904 so I was about 9 years old, going on 9 I was 8.
...What part of Concord Junction was that?
It was right on Main Street a double house. Then he went to work for the grain company up in South Acton so he used to walk up the track every morning to get to work at seven o'clock and then he'd get through at five and walk home again.
... So he walked, he didn't take the train?
No, the train didn't run when he had to go to work.
... How long a walk was that?
It was about three miles so it was a little longer than a half hour.
...What did he do in the grain company?
He drove the wagon and delivered the orders as they came in. They'd load them up and he'd go around to the farms and deliver. I think he got $9 a week. (Showing family pictures)
...I didn't realize the Blueine Company went back that far to 1907?
Oh, it was before then.
...I didn't know that in those days companies encouraged baseball like they do now, you know they always have the names.
You see the Blueine Manufacturing Company made blueine on sheets, square sheets, and we'd sell it for 10 cents a pack or something like that. Then we'd get a prize. Alan Kennedy worked down there and Cy Bean worked there too. They were looking for somebody to advertise baseball suits and so forth so Alan asked me if I would do it. I said I didn't want to and he said "Oh, you get a pair of skates." So I said all right. We went up to Maynard to Ellis the photographer and we had the picture taken and I went back and they gave me a pair of skates. So I went right out skating and I was going along beautiful and I happened to hit an air hole and one skate went down in the hole. So I went back to see if I could get another one or get one to go with that one. They said "We gave you one pair, that's it." Boy, was my heart broken!
...Where was this house on Main Street, you said it was a double house?
That's still there. You know where Conant Street is, when you're coming from Maynard, there's a double on the corner but don't count that one, then there's two little houses and the next one is a double house and we lived there.
...Was your dad ever in the Sons of Norway?
Oh, yes. I belonged to the Sons of Norway.
...Did your mother work?
She took in washing and sewing.
...And raised eight kids besides!
Well, it wasn't eight kids at that time. She was a hard working woman. She didn't get too much out of life but she got what she could. She belonged to the Eastern Star and belonged to the
church. When we moved to West Concord, she went to the Union
Church.
...Did your father too?
No, he didn't go very often because he worked all the time. That's what killed him too. Raised kids and worked himself to death.
... Did he always work at that grain place in South Acton?
No, he went to work for the Lapham brothers plastering and went into the mason trade.
...Where was that located?
Well, Waldo lived on Main Street and Dan lived on Central Street. They had a place where they could have their mortar bed and all the equipment.
...When you say he worked himself to death, did he work six days a week?
Oh, when he was working for himself, he built a house down on Lawsbrook Road and had a barn built at the same time and he had a cow and a horse because he didn't have a car then. He'd take his equipment in a wagon wherever he went. One time I was working for him and it's twelve miles I think from here to Marlboro and we used to leave early in the morning and go up there and work eight hours a day and drive back. He never got money ahead to have a truck. That's one reason why I left school when I was 14 because I didn't get much pay but I gave it all to them except 50 cents and I went to the movies once in a while for 10 cents.
...Tell me where you went to work?
I worked in the Strathmore Worsted Mill. We were living down on Lawsbrook Road then. We moved there in 1913. He kept a horse and cow and traveled everywhere with a wagon and then Sundays he would load us into the wagon and we would go up to my grandfathers or go over to somebody else and help them pick strawberries. He could pick 200 boxes a day. My father was a hard-working good man. He never abused us but if we didn't mind we knew about it. But he never really beat us up. He treated us like human beings.
...What kinds of things would you have done if you got into trouble? What would have been defined as getting into trouble with your father?
If I got into trouble with my father, he always had a switch around or if we started to run, he always had a six foot whip and he'd catch us anyway.
When I was going to school, he had land down on Conant Street
three or four acres and he raised strawberries, asparagus, and
vegetables for the winter time. He would tell me to go over and
weed the strawberries and I wouldn't go. I never had any time for
myself. So I would take time and I got hell for it.
...Tell me what led you to go to the Strathmore Mill. Can you remember in your own mind figuring out that you were old enough and talking to your folks about it.
We had just gone into the eighth grade and there were four or five of us that left school at that time. We went to school in September and my birthday was in November and then I left school. I had to get a working certificate and you had to be fourteen years old. I had to bring that up there to the mill. I went to work in the Strathmore Worsted Mill.
When I went in there, I worked in the weave room putting drop wires on the threads, they dropped down when the thread broke and stopped the loom. That's why they called them drop wires.
... How many looms would you have to take care of?
We took care of all the looms and every time they put in a new walk, we had to take and put the wires on so we were busy all around there all the time. There were only two of us that had that job. The other one was Johnny French who lived in Maynard. That's the first time I met him and we became very good friends. I used to see him once in a while when I would come to Maynard when I was living in West Concord.
...What were the hours that you worked?
7:00 to 6:00 with an hour off for dinner, ten hours a day six days a week for $5.22. This would have been about 1909.
... How long did you spend working at the mill?
Not too long, about a year or so. Then there was a fellow Frank Wakeland that had a fish business and he was looking for somebody to drive one of his wagons, so I went to work for him. I drove to part of Concord Junction, South Acton, West Acton and to East Acton and I delivered fish to private homes.
He'd go to Boston on Mondays and bring home a load of fish. I'd have to stay at the shop and shave ice to pack the fish in and then we'd have to scale them and take the sound out (the black part that's in the gut) and weigh them. Then we would pack them in the ice. We used a horse and wagon so we would pack the wagon the night before and be ready to go out the next morning. I worked from 7:00 to 6:00 and when I was going up toward Littleton, I would get to the shop about 6:45. I would get up at 5:30 and have my breakfast and walk a mile and half to work.
...What did you make at that job?
I got $30 a week.
...That must have helped your family a lot.
Oh, it did because I gave them most of it. I kept a few bucks for myself.
...And you were just 15-16 years old when you were doing that? How long did you do that?
Well, I was only there a short while because then I got another job. In the winter time we used to go over to Bob Mason's and fill the ice houses. Then Alan Mason passed away and I was working for his father tending ice. I was only 16-17 years old.
...Didn't Herman Hansen do that too?
He was a carpenter but I don't know what he did before. So I used to go up Fairhaven Hill and get halfway up the hill and back the horse around and pull off four or five cakes and I would go up and fill the iceboxes on the hill, come down and back the horse up, put ice back on again. I don't think I weighed over a hundred pounds.
...What did you do to have a good time, Ed?
Well, there wasn't much you could do.
...A lot of the men like Terry McHugh and John Macone talk about going to dances a lot when they got to be 17 or 18, they'd go to Carlisle...
But that's something I never had a chance to do. I don't today know how to dance. My father danced. He'd go to dances two or three times a week and do an eight-hour day of work the next day.
If he'd see a girl sitting on the side there, he'd go over to her and she might say "I don't know how to dance", and he says "You will after I get through with you".
...Did he ever do Norwegian dances or just the typical...
Well, the Norwegian people had kitchen parties and they would dance. The Norwegian parties were practically the same thing as the Irish "kitchen rackets".
...Who would be the hosts for this kind of thing?
Well, the Benson family was one over on Balls Hill Road and they would have dances once in a while and my father would take me but I didn't learn to dance.
...Did somebody play a fiddle or what kind of music did they dance to?
Accordion. My father could play accordion. Oh, lot of nights he would sit there and play.
... Did some of the men drink beer?
Yes, they would have a keg of beer and you could help yourself.
... Edie Hansen Christiansen and Thelma Soberg were telling me about some of these parties that their parents would go to and they remembered some of the men getting pretty violent.
Oh, yea, they'd have fights. I should say so. There was one guy there who was really a rough guy but I forgot what his name was. That's the hell of getting old, you forget.
But I'm not criticizing myself, but I can't remember the way I used to. And I used to have a darn good memory too.
...Well, from what I've been getting right now, I would say you have a very impressive memory.
Well, I try to keep these things in my mind all the time.
...When did you get a more permanent job, Ed?
When I left Frank Wakelen - this was in October 1924 - after I come home from the service in 1919 ...
...Oh, we're going to go back to that. You went into World War I.
Oh yes. I went from Concord. I joined the Concord Company. The "militia whistle" blew - that's the militia call - so I said I'm going to go down because I had been reading about Springfield boys getting in the Army and Concord getting in the Army and all this and that, and then they were talking about drafting and all this and I said I'm not going to be drafted. I want to go with somebody that I know. I was working for Adams & Bridges at that time.
...What's Adams & Bridges?
Grocery store. Right across the street from the post office.
...In Concord Junction?
Concord Junction, yes.
...As a sales clerk or delivery boy?
I had to go out and get an order and put it up and deliver it. And I had South Acton for one of my routes and I had Commonwealth Avenue and a couple of other odd stops that they put on me, so I would get the orders and then come back and put them up. The same way with South Acton. I didn't stay there long. A couple of years, I guess. And as I said, the whistle blew. Chet Elmes, he was one of the boys who worked there. He was a steady, one of the steadies. So he says that's the militia call, and he belonged to the Company.
...What was his name?
Chet Elmes. Chester Elmes. So there was Hal Coolidge and Arthur Wood and myself, and Chet was the fourth one. So we went down to have the exams, and I didn't tell my folks I was going.
...Would this be 1917, soon as the United States declared war?
March of 1917. So I went down and Dr. Clark - I knew him anyway - he was there. I only weiged 120 pounds. Just got by. And he said, "Oh, you're healthy enough!" So I signed up and I went in. And then we used to do marches and all different things. And they sent us over to the militia place over there in Framingham. There's a name for that too. Musterfield. They'd go over there in the summertime, and companies would go through exercises, army work and so forth. We were over there for a short while and got our shots. Then the last fifty - the company was already one hundred - and the last fifty was to make it one hundred fifty, and I was one of them. They sent us by train over to Ayer. That was Camp Devens. They were just building it. So we went over there and pitched tents and stayed in the tents there, and we'd be on watch duty four hours and off four hours. We'd have to walk all around certain parts. Each one of us would have our own territory. We'd have to watch around because the people who were building there, they were foreigners, Italians and everything like that, and they weren't supposed to smoke, and we used to have to go around and if we see them smoking, tell them to put it out and learn not to smoke any more. Sometimes we couldn't make them understand or they didn't want to. But anyway we had to walk all the way around this for four hours.
And then they sent us to Westfield. They had corrals there. They put about eight or ten of us in the supply company and then they put other fellows in different companies, so many in each company. There was D Company and M Company and L Company. There were three or four companies; they split them all up. There was E Company. Mike Towler was the only one from Concord Company that went into the E Company, and boy, he didn't know a single soul and when you go in with strangers, you're pretty homesick. We did some more drill and so forth. I guess they checked and picked the farmers and put them on the supply company because we had to drive mules and so forth. We stayed there until December.
...This is Bill Bailey interviewing Edwin Edwardsen of Maynard for the second time. I interviewed him about a month ago. I am going to use this time to learn a bit more about the Edwardsen family and Ed's relationship to the mills where he worked most of his life.
You mentioned your father's name was Engebretsen?
His father's name was Engebretsen. Edward Engebretsen. And of course, my father's name was Andrew Engebretsen. So when he come to this country, he took his father's name, Edward, and put "sen" on it. That's where we got the name of Edwardsen.
...As was the case with so many people. Andersons are just sons of Andrew and so on. I suspect if you had stayed in Norway, then your last name might be Anderson, possibly.
It would be Engebretson.
...Now do you see any relationship with Fred Engebretson then? Are you related, do you think, or not?
My father was related to Engebretson in Concord, but I forget what his first name is [Albert]. He was an electrician in Concord.
...Is that Fred's father, or uncle?
I don't know. Fred lives on Derby Street.
...Yes. I'm going to see him some time. His family came from Hamar which is next to Loiten. But you said that they were cousins or brothers?
Cousins.
...Cousins, your father and the electrician.
Fred and I belonged to the Odd Fellows too.
...I knew you did. Tell me, before we get into your work at the mill, I have some more family questions that I want to ask you. I felt as I listened to the tape that I had a pretty good sense of what your father was like, but not too much about your mother, and I'd like to know a little more about her. She worked as a maid, didn't she, before she married your father?
No. That was Martina. That was her sister. She worked as a maid. My mother was still on the farm, and my father worked on the farm, and that's how they got acquainted.
...When your mother and father moved to West Concord at that point, was it your mother who took in some laundry and did that kind of thing?
When we moved to West Concord, my mother took in washing and she was a good seamstress so she used to do a lot of dressmaking. My father wasn't making big money, and when we first moved to West Concord, he used to walk up to South Acton and work for the grain company up there. He'd deliver grain by horse and wagon. And then he'd walk back. He'd walk up the railroad and come back that way too.
...Your father really worked very, very hard all his life.
Well, that's the whole trouble. He worked himself to death because he was having kids and we were growing up, he worked day and night. In the summetime he'd work eight hours mason work, and thenhe'd come - in those days he had a horse and wagon - and he'd go out with the horse and plow gardens to make extra money. And my mother used to take in washing, and she used to do a lot of dressmaking. If some people were getting married, she'd make their wedding gowns and so forth. And then she had us to take care of.
...Did they die when you were young, Eddie?
My father died in April of 1945, and I would be 50.
...So he wasn't a young man when he died.
When my mother died, she died in 1959, so I'd be 64.
...Did you have a sense that your mother had time, ever, to relax and enjoy herself?
Well, she used to go to a women's club and the Eastern Star, and that was her, you might say, activities. My father was a dancer. He'd work eight hours a day, and come home and lay on the couch for an hour, go out and milk the cow, come in and have his supper, get cleaned up, and he and another fellow, they'd go dancing nights. He'd drive the horse, and he'd have a carriage, and they'd come home at midnight, and then he'd get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and go out and milk the cow, have his breakfast, and go to work.
... He took your mother dancing too?
My mother never danced. She never wanted to. I don't know why.
...So she'd stay home?
She'd stay home.
...Did they belong to the West Concord Church?
Yes. Well, when we were living on Barrett's Mill Road, I was baptized at the Trinitarian Church. That was our church. And I used to walk down, I was about six years old just going to school, and I'd walk down to church every Sunday morning and walk back home again, and I was only about six or seven years old.
...Was that when Ole Thorpe was minister at the Trinitarian?
Yes.
...At the Norwegian branch in the Trinitarian, right?
That's right. And then they had a Methodist church up on Thoreau Street and I think some of that was Norwegian too.
...And then when you moved to Lawsbrook, they joined West Concord Union Church?
Union Church.
... Did your mother have lots of close friends, do you think?
Oh, yeah, because she belonged to the Eastern Star, and she belonged to the women's club. She didn't belong to anything in Concord. Everything was in West Concord. And she went there until the time she passed away. She had a lot of friends there. They didn't visit back and forth the way they do sometimes. But the neighbors, if you were sick, would come in and help and so forth. But they don't do that nowadays very much.
...What about politics? Did your parents ever go to Town Meeting and participate that way?
Well, my father did, I guess. There was another thing he belonged to but I don't remember what the name of it is. He belonged to the Sons of Norway, for one thing. And then he belonged to another organization.
...Was that the Sick Benefit Society?
Yes.
...Because those were both Norwegian groups, weren't they.
I belonged there for a while and I got out of it.
...Did you belong to the Sons of Norway, too, Eddie?
Yeah, I belonged because he belonged. I don't know the reason why I gave up. But of course it was an organization that I wasn't really interested in, but my father wanted me to join so that's why I joined.
...Did your father ever participate in those tugs-o-war that they used to have?
Oh, I guess so. He and I were supposed to go back to Norway in 1914 because I think that was going to be the hundredth anniversary of Norway and Sweden separating. But we never got there, and after he came to this country, he never went back again, because he had family to raise, and he had to work, and all this and that. He never could get money to make the trip.
...And your mother never went either.
Well, my mother, when she was two years old, her family went over.
... Oh, that's right. And one of her sisters was born there, wasn't she.
Yes. And I think that's what helped her to speak Norwegian because she got a little taste of it over there. I think they stayed a couple of years, I'm not sure. But a lot of these things get out of your mind.
...But your father used to go to town meeting?
Yes, he used to go to Town Meeting. And there was another
thing in West Concord that he used to go to, and I can't think of
the name of it. One of them was the Improvement Society they had
there. But there was another one too, but I can't think of the name
of it.
...Was the Edwardsen family Republican?
Oh, yes. Most of the Norwegians are. But there's a few Democrats among the Norwegians.
...That's been my sense in talking to Norwegians here, that they tended to join the Republican Party when they became citizens.
When I was 21 years old, I joined. I think Coolidge was up for president at that time. Of course, I was in the Yankee Division in World War I. I was in the Supply Company. That was Company I, and then they broke up Company I.
...Tell me about your brothers and sisters. I guess what I'm trying to do as I learn more about Norwegians and about Italians and Irish and so on, I'm trying to get some sense of patterns in terms of how people made their living and what kind of education they had and whether they married other Norwegians or what have you.
There wasn't any of us married Norwegians. There was five boys and three girls. Paul is the oldest one. He's out in Ohio. He went to MIT. He was doing some kind of teaching down there, but he didn't go to school there at all. He went there to work. He went through high school and I think he went to Amherst to take up agriculture.
... At Stockbridge?
Yes. But he didn't have a farm or anything like that. He just had gardens. He went through high school and he worked in Cambridge, I think. And he went to MIT, and worked there.
... Doing what kind of work?
Well, he was working on the metals down there. They were teaching metals at that time, and he went to work for them and they were the ones that started nuclear.
... Nuclear Metals?
Yes. They'd call him and so forth.
...Did he work, then, as a scientist, would you say?
No. He was just an ordinary worker and he happened to get that job in Cambridge for this concern. My brother Ted went into MIT and did the same thing. He was the one that made the chrome and so forth. Paul went out to Ohio, working for this company. And they were doing plastic work. You know, the stuff they put around hot water pipes in order to keep the heat in. They were doing that at Baker Avenue. The reason they went there in the beginning was they couldn't find a place in Cambridge that was big enough for them to work so they happened to go out there and eventually he was made manager. Then he had a daughter and a son, but the son went into the navy in the Second World War, I think. Then he retired.
... So he was a manager of the division of the plant out in Ohio.
Yes.
...And he's still living, and a little bit younger than you then?
Well, yeah. All of them. I'm the oldest of the eight. My sister was born in 1897. She's the one that passed away a few years ago. And Paul was born in 1899 in July. My sister was born in July too.
...Did he marry a Concord girl?
He married one of the Loring girls. Olive Loring. Her father worked at the reformatory as a coach.
...He was not the Loring that married a Macone, is he?
Charlie Loring was part of the family. He was the janitor of the school, and he was the one that married, I think her name was Anna. My brother Fred married a girl whose family came over from Norway. Her name was Catherine Drysdale. And I married when I came home from the service. I married Elizabeth Scanlan because I worked at the grocery store before I went in the service and when I came back, they didn't want me back again. So somebody told me about Whitcomb up in Acton so I went up there and I got the job.
...Tell me about Fred. What did he do?
Paul went to high school. My sister didn't go to high school.
...And Fred and Teddy didn't either?
Fred didn't either, but Ted and my sister Evelina, she went to high school and then she went to college. Well, I don't know whether it was a college.
...For learning secretarial, stenography?
I think she was filing and different things like that. She had a pretty good job after she left school. Evelina. She didn't like it because that was my mother's name so she changed it to Evelyn.
...And then, did she get a job after?
She met this fellow. He worked for the bakery company. Western Bakery Company. So she married him. He had been in the navy. He was a mechanic. She had her first boy, and she got sick from pneumonia so my wife and I took him down with us. We had to break him to the bottle so after a while she got better, and she took him back. And then she had another one, and we had to take care of him until she got better.
...I bet you missed them when they went back home.
Oh yes. We bought clothes for them and everything else,
because we didn't have any children, couldn't have any. Then I
built a house up on Central Street. The other boy, she was sick for
a time again, so we had him to break from the bottle and baby food
and so forth, and I was just building the house, and I was getting
the back yard, because when they dug out the cellar they piled everything. They didn't separate the gravel from the loam and I had
a heck of a job doing that. And my wife couldn't let him out
because he'd get in the mud and so forth and she'd have to clean him
all up again. He'd get mad. He stood on the radiator - we had
short radiators - he'd get so mad. So we had his teeth marks in
there for years. When he'd get so he'd come up, we'd take him in
there and show him, "Look at what you did to that windowsill." He
looked at it and said, "That, me?" and I said, "Yes."
...So Teddy and Fred, how did they make their living? You said Teddy worked at MIT.
Well, he was the one that went to Nuclear afterward. And he died in 1963. So that was his job, there. And Fred learned the mason trade from my father.
... And what about Howard?
Howard, he went to high school. He went to school in Boston. I forget whether it was Burdett. He worked for Krist Andersen at the garage doing his bookkeeping, and there was going to be an opening up at the reformatory, and he went to school and he got good marks. There was another fellow just a little better than he was, but he had a pull somewhere.
...So Howard didn't get the job at the reformatory?
He didn't get that job.
...Did he graduate from the high school?
Oh, yes. He graduated.
...And from Burdett also?
Yes. One of the fellows that was working up there, he had another job come up, and he got Howard the job up there so he was bookkeeper up there for twenty-one, twenty-two years. Industrial bookkeeping.
...Howard was at the reformatory ultimately, then?
Yes. He was in World War II in the navy. He was on one of those U-boats. He was out in the Pacific somewhere and he had a heart attack, but they got him out of that, and he stayed in and when he came out, he got a pension. And he gets a pension from the reformatory, the State. And he's still working, and he's 76. And he wants to work. And he wants to get enough so when he retires, he'll get a good pension.
...Even though he's 76?
Well, he never did really hard work. Probably he did when he was younger but he worked at the Adams & Bridges store too.
...And so what he does now at this firm is more bookkeeping? Isn't there a Howard Edwardsen that's in business with Howie Soberg?
That was Teddy. Teddy Edwardsen. My brother Ted's son. And he sold his share to the Soberg sons.
But they still go under E & S. It used to be Edwardsen and Soberg. And now it's E & S. And Teddy has still got something in that because he had the land and they built the building and so he has a share in that. [corner of Commonwealth and Lawsbrook]
..But your nephew Teddy orginally started the thing with Howie?
With Howie, yes. You know where Baker Avenue is? There's a gas station there on the corner? They were the first ones there and they had the opportunity to go up there where they are now because the building was bigger and they could do more and so forth. Down at the other place, they only had two bays and up here, they got three. They've got a side door too so they could keep machines, cars going from one place to another and then they didn't have to hold them up so long as when they didn't have that much room.
...What did your other two sisters do then?
Well, my sister Dorothy, she never was very well. She only went through the grammar school, but she was a cook for one of the
families in Concord. It was William Wheeler, I think it was. She worked there. Well, she worked in several places, but that was the last place she worked, as a cook. And she got married, but never had any children.
...And who did she marry?
She married Everett Reed up in South Acton. He was doing office work in Boston for the Boston & Maine Railroad.
... And your other sister?
That would be Ruth. She was the youngest one. She passed away
a few years ago. My father used to take her and my older sister to
Lowell every Saturday night for dancing. The girls used to sit
along the wall. He'd say, "Come on." And they'd say, "I can't
dance." And he'd say, "You will when I get through with you." The
young girls, they used to like him very much. He was teaching them
something that they wanted to do. He taught a lot of them and after
he passed away, I used to run into some of the girls and they said, "Oh, gosh, we miss your father. He was full of hell all the time." I think he was, because he was that way, he was full of humor all
the time. But he worked himself to death, I think. It's too bad,
too.
...So what happened to Ruth?
Well, Ruth got married to a fellow, he used to be drinking all the time. He got her drinking. So then they separated and he went to California, and of course, she couldn't get out of the habit, and picked up with somebody in Littleton. It was too bad, too, because she was a nice person.
... Did she go to high school?
Yes, she went to high school, graduated. I forget where she worked. Well, it's too bad the way people turn out.
...Well, every family has that in their history. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about when you worked for Strathmore? How many people would have been employed there, roughly? Would there have been about a hundred, do you think?
Well, I guess altogether, there probably would be. They had about a hundred rooms, they had two floors.
...And it was cotton in those days?
Worsted.
...This is 1914, about, isn't it? Or maybe even a little earlier.
No, that would be earlier, because I was working there in 1910. A friend, well, I didn't know him til after I met him there, he came in and he wanted a job at the mill, and I was working on the winding machine at that time, winding bobbins for the weave shop - the looms. We had three spools, forty threads on a spool and we had 120 spinners for bobbins.
...One hundred twenty spinners for each ...
One hundred twenty bobbins to wind the threads on. They'd be turning around, you know. The thread would be going up and down and so forth, and then when you get to the end, you had to stop the machine and so forth. And while I was there they had a man on the twisting machine and they had two of those machines and they had five of the others and they'd strap the worsted thread and the silk thread and they'd wind it together. That's the way they got the stripe. It was wool about that high.
... About eight inches long?
Yes, about that around. And it had two ends on it. You had to put it down. And you didn't stop the machine. You had to stop that with your hand and lift it off and then tie a string on again and put it back on again.
...Was that dangerous, require a lot of skill, or rather, quick?
No, it was dangerous. You had to know how to do it. That's all. I liked that job.
...So basically what you did was replace these spools with new thread? That was your job?
Yes. You see, they'd use all the thread up and then you had to take a string and wind it.
...Is that what they call a bobbin boy, or not?
Well, it might have been a bobbin boy, yes. But I was doing the winding.
...How many of you would be doing that particular thing.
Two or three. There were five machines. When I was there, each one of those five was on the machines, but I was the only one on the twisting machine. We had two machines to take care of 240 spools. And they had girls over on the side and they'd be winding the spools, the big spools with the threads.
But I don't know which job I liked. I liked both of them, but I don't know which I liked better. But I did like the twisting machines. I liked to see the black and silk thread going twisting around. It kind of amazed me.
...Did you know lots of the people who worked there, Ed, when you went to work there?
Oh, yeah. I knew a lot of them, but I don't remember any of them.
...Because they all lived in your neighborhood, or what?
Well, they either boarded there or they lived in Maynard because they used to have the cars come down with a load of people from Maynard, and so forth.
...All ages working there?
All ages, because a lot of the people were sewers in there. When the cloth would come, it would skip, you know, and they'd have to sew that thread in there. They were grown-up people. And the people in the drying-in room, they were older women. I got this job in the winding room and then the boss put me on the twisting machines. It was funny, every job that I went in over there, I liked! I don't know why.
...Were some jobs more skilled than others there, would you say?
Well, yes, in the weave room, I would say that was more skilled than what I had to do because when you're winding bobbins, all you have to do is walk back and forth, and if the string broke, stop the machine, tie it on, and start it up again. The same way with the twisting machine.
...Do you know where the power came from to man those machines?
From the boiler room.
...I see. So it was steam?
Steam. Water power.
...From the river right in back there?
Right in back. It come right down those canals, you know. That's where the water run out. It was this side of the river.
...When it was Colt Strathmore, does that mean the Damon's weren't owners any more at that point?
No. They weren't owners at that time. I think they had a woolen mill there before or something. There's a block up on the wall there just over where it used to be the office, and the dates and everything are up there, but I forgot it. I made up my mind some one of these days I'm going to stop and look and see what the dates are up there, but they're in the late eighteen hundreds - 1890's or so.
...Then you would have been responsible to a foreman, Ed?
Oh, yes. He was the boss. I don't know whether they called him a foreman or not. This was part of his business that he'd learned and so forth, and then he was made boss there, so he had charge of that whole floor. There was the winding machines for the bobbins and the ones that I did for the spools, and there were other machines there that they did winding with. And then there were girls who were winding the 40-inch spools and the other girls were only winding the single threads. Johnny French was the first fellow I met when I went there because he and I worked on the drop wires on the looms, and I got transferred upstairs, and he got transferred on picking up the waste that came off the machines. He'd take it upstairs on the top floor and separate all that stuff, and put it in great big bags. They weighed about 150 pounds, or more. And then he left and I was transferred too.
...You really kept being moved a lot, didn't you?
Oh, yes. Well, the pay wasn't very big, I think, when I was winding. I got $12 a week. I was making $9 when I first started. It was piece work anyway.
...I was thinking you'd told me you got $5.50 a week.
$5.22.
... For the first time?
When I first went in there.
...But then ultimately made nine, and then even twelve?
Yes.
...When you'd get that pay, Ed, would that all go right home to your mother and father?
I got 50 cents.
...You got 50 cents out of it and that's all.
That's all. Well, that was of $5.22. Because they furnished all my clothes because 50 cents wouldn't go far for clothes. As I was getting more, then I got more, and then I had to buy some of my clothes. I can remember when I first went to work, Association Hall had another floor up above, two floors I guess, and they used to have movies up there. And each Saturday night I'd ask my father, "Can I have a dime for the movies?" "I gave you a dime a month ago. What did you do with that?"
...A month ago?
Yes. I said I went to the movies and I want to go to the movies again. Well, he used to give it to me. But money was scarce.
...Tell me then about the Allen Chair Factory. What led you to look for a job there, and how old were you? Were you married by that time?
Yes. I was married. Well, I was working for Frank Wakelen. He was in the fish business. And I was coming home from the route one day, late in the afternoon, and I stopped in front of Joe Hay's to buy a new pair of shoes, but I was having an extra sole put on on account of the water and so forth, and I didn't have to wear rubbers or boots. And Bill Fought was the superintendent over to the chair shop. He was from Virginia. And I knew him quite well. So he just happened to come out of the post office and he saw me right there and he hollered across, and he said, "Hey, Ed, how are you?" And I says, "Hi ya, Bill, pretty good." And he says, "I understand you're looking for another job." "Well," I said, "I'll take another job if I can make more money." "Well," he says, "we're going to put in a time study over to the shop so we can get the cost of the chairs."
...What's a time study?
Well, you go around timing all the articles that go through a chair, you know. Like legs, they had to be machined on lathes. Holes bored.
...And how much time it takes to do each thing?
Then you have to go and take the times of each one. You have to take the time when you're upstairs in the assembling room. Kind of how long it takes to put a chair together. So I says, "I don't know, Bill, whether I could do that." "Oh," he says, "you can do it." But I said I didn't know and he said that he was going to make an appointment and "you and your wife can go up and see him someday. He'll let you know." So he got the appointment and he told me about it and so we went up there. We spent a pretty good evening.
...Would this have been around 1924 or 1925, something like that?
I went in there in October 1924. And I was there till March 27th or 28th because they had sold the place.'
... Of what year?
They passed the papers at the end of 1955, but I worked till
1956 because I had to get a lot of the chairs out. They'd sold
them, and so forth. And then I had to get another job because I was
running out of time and I didn't want to wait until the last minute
and not find a job.
... Did you have a pension there?
No. They put in so much - this is in 1951 - and they took the years of how long you'd been there and then they'd add on something else, and they'd put your earnings, you know, your share. ...Like profit sharing, I guess they call it?
Yes, that's it. After they got it all figured out, I had $400 for my share. And then they sold it again because they were going out of business so they figured out my shares again, so I got something like $800.
...So then, you went to work there and your job was to do the time studies.
I was only there, I guess, a couple of years on that job. They fired the shipper and then I finally got down in the shipping room. It was the same thing. Bill said we just fired the shipper. Go down and take over the shipping. And I says, "Bill, I don't know anything about shipping." "Oh," he says, "you'll learn." He was the darndest person!
...So you were in charge, then, of shipping? You were the head shipper, or whatever?
There was only one shipper.
...What does the shipper do?
Well, first thing I had four or five girls packing. They had to pack all the furniture. I had to get it ready and get the orders ready and so forth. They'd give me the yellow sheet, what they sold, and then I'd have to get it ready and ship it out. And then I had one man to assemble the revolving chairs and all that stuff, and if he had time, if there was any crating to do, he had to do that. All I did was the shipping. See that everything was shipped all right and where it was going and see if it was tagged all right, and so forth.
...You oversaw, then, packaging as well as all the final arrangements, short of having the trucks come and pick up?
Well, there wasn't any trucks. We had a truck that went to Boston every day, delivering stuff in there to the furniture places. Of course, we made a lot of office chairs, and we made kitchen furniture. And then as things were growing, they added on different kinds of furniture - maple furniture, chairs, and settees and all that stuff. For the office chairs, they had eight-foot settees.
...But not regular dining room chairs, then? They didn't make those at Allan Chair?
Yeah, they made those too. They had an oak dining room chair
and they had an oak table. When I was first married, I got the
table and the dining room chairs....So how did they get shipped then if they had just one truck.
Did they go by train?
They went by freight.
...By freight train.
Or boat.
...Was there a siding that went up there?
Oh, yes. We had a siding always. I think it's still there. I don't know. We had the lumber yard way down at the end so they had to have rails to go in there to bring in the lumber because that all came by car. They had a dry house down at the other end too, but I had nothing to do with that end at all. Well, I really didn't have charge of the paint shop but I had to go up and see that the stuff come through and so forth, so I'd get it on time. When there was extra stock come along, the girls would have to go up in the top floor and pack that and we'd pile it up and, then when the orders come in why just take it off the pile and ship it out.
World War II was coming along at that time. Roosevelt was the president. We had to get stuff ready for the army because they were building barracks and different things. We'd load cars and we'd send them out west or I'd load parts of a car and they'd have to stop on the way to their destination.
...What would you make for those barracks, chairs or beds?
Dining room chairs and tables, kitchen chairs and so forth.
...Mostly of maple or pine or all kinds?
Maple.
... Did Allen Chair own other furniture or chair factories or just that one?
That's the only one they owned but they started up in Greenville, New Hampshire or was it Greenfield, Mass. Well, anyway they built that place, the three buildings, the dry house, the boiler room and all that stuff and they moved in in 1906 and they sold it to Finley in 1955.
...Did most of the employees there live in Concord, would you say?
Maynard, Concord, Acton, just the surrounding towns.
...And again, were there some fairly highly skilled workers who would actually make the furniture or was it all machine made...
Well, everything worked through machines and they had sanding rooms there and they had glue rooms to glue up the seats and table tops and all that stuff.
They had a dry house in the glue room so that when they glued up the chairs they could put them in there to dry. They had a bending room there to bend the posts for the chairs and arms. They had a separate place in the middle building up on the top floor that was for painting and staining and downstairs was the filling room where they filled the chairs with filler because there were a lot of seams in it and you had to use filler to fill off all those seams. Then they would go upstairs and they would varnish them or they would use lacquer.
...Were they considered to be high quality products or middle price or cheap?
We used to have Bank of England chairs and they were high priced, everything was fairly high priced there and it was good stuff, too. Peabody of Boston would buy there, they sold office material, they'd buy a lot of it. We used to send a truck into Boston every day with chairs. We had one particular chair that we used to send into a company for schools and convents. They used them in the dining rooms or in the classrooms too.
...Did you make dining room chairs for people's homes?
Not that way. It was more for schools and offices. They used to make an office chair for the reformatory for the simple reason they didn't have a furniture place up there. But after a while the state furnished machines and then they could make them themselves.
...I think in the '60s and '70s they did make a lot of furniture up there at the reformatory.
They made a lot of tables up there too so we kind of got out of the bidding on that stuff up there. Gardner [city of] used to bid on that furniture too, you know. And the one that had the lowest bid would get it.
...What kind of hours did you work?
Seven to four, eight hours.
...Did you have a union?
I guess it was in 1938 or '39.
...Was it the AF of L, carpenter's union?
I don't remember.
...It wasn't a company union.
It wasn't a company union but I forget what it was. I couldn't belong anyway because I was a foreman and a shipper but we used to get the raise if they got it.
...What was Mr. Allen's first name?
When I first went to work there, it was Charles Allen Sr. He was the owner at that time and he had a son there named Stuart Allen. Then Stuart Allen's son come in later because he was working out in Texas and the grandfather was going to leave so they got him back, so it was all in the family.
...And they didn't want to have a union?
They didn't want a union in there because you see the wages weren't big at that time and if people wanted a raise they had to fight for it really to get it. So they said we're not going to go through this so that's why they got a union in there. And I think the workers stayed out for quite a while; it was quite a while before the Allens would give in and I think the union was the same one they had in Gardner. But they wouldn't let any of the foremen join the union. But if they would get a raise we would too, we maybe would get a penny or two more than they would because we had more responsibility.
Did I tell you the story about when I went up there to get the job in the beginning?
...With your wife when you went up to talk, I guess you didn't tell me.
Well, anyway we went up there and we got to talking and so forth, I did most of the talking. I said, "Mr. Allen, I'll tell you the truth I'm not a bluffer. I left school when I was fourteen years old and I didn't go through the grammar school but I had a lot of arithmetic in different places I've worked, so I think my education is fair." "Well," he says "I can get a college educated man but I don't want him. I want to run my own business, I don't want them to tell me how to run it. I'd like to have somebody that I can teach my way." So at the time I was working for the fish man making $35 a week.
(Tape stopped at this point for a telephone call) BB picks up here with description of the remainder of the interview. [When Mr. Edwardsen came back from his phone conversation, we talked a little bit more and one of the things he stressed to me was that when he first went to work for Allen Chair, he had lots of difficulties sleeping at night. He had so many things on his mind and so many worries, so many things that he felt that he just couldn't get to. Essentially what he was communicating to me was in his own words that he felt a tremendous burden that he had only gone through school through age fourteen and he had to prove himself. That this was a tremendous opportunity that Mr. Allen had given to him, a display of confidence and a lot of responsibility being in charge of shipping at Allen Chair and that made it difficult. On the other hand, he told me at the same time how really proud he was that he had been able to achieve as much as he had in his life. Again as he said in his own words, "I guess you could call me a self-made man."]