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Leominster Mass.

A Brief History of the Plastic Pink Flamingo

Don Featherstone made landscape history in 1957 when he designed the plastic pink flamingo for a Leominster, Mass., plastics company.

Little did he know that the eye-catching lawn ornament would sell 20 million copies, inspire several films and become a cultural icon both loathed and revered.

The plastic pink flamingo wasn’t the only widely used product to come out of Leominster’s plastic factories (think Tupperware). But somehow the plastic pink flamingo caught people’s attention in ways that nothing else did.

Marc Abrams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine, tried to explain their appeal.

“Part of the attraction of Don’s flamingos is that it’s hard to explain why they are fascinating or special,” Abrams told the BBC.

The First Plastic Pink Flamingo

Featherstone was born Jan. 25, 1936, in Worcester, Mass., which is also, by the way, the home of the smiley face.

He grew up in Berlin and graduated from the Worcester Art Museum’s art school. He then anticipated the career advice immortalized in the 1967 film, The Graduate: Plastics.

Featherstone went to work for plastics manufacturer Union Products Co. in Leominster. His job: designing three-dimensional animals. His inaugural efforts included a boy with a dog and a girl with a watering can.

He designed the pink flamingo based on photographs in National Geographic Magazine. Sold in pairs, they went on sale in 1958 for $2.76. The Sears catalogue carried them, with the instructions, “Place in garden, lawn, to beautify landscape.

They sold. And sold. And sold.

Featherstone once said they appealed to people living in subdivisions with identical homes. “A woman could pick up a flamingo at the store and come home with a piece of tropical elegance under her arm to change her humdrum house,” he said.

His wife, Nancy, added that people just thought they were pretty.

Plastic City

The year that Don Featherstone joined Union Products, Leominster had 60 plastics factories employing 5,500 people – 80 percent of the city’s work force.

The city, about an hour northwest of Boston, had long been an important center of plastics manufacturing.

It started when the Fitchburg Railroad came through Leominster, allowing manufacturing to flourish. Leominster’s small factories specialized in combs. By 1853, 146 people in 24 factories churned out combs.

It took time, though, to make a comb. A worker had to rough out the form from an animal hoof or horn, then cut the teeth individually. But in 1868, celluloid came along. Leominster really began cranking out combs, earning the nickname “Comb City.”

Then in 1901, Leominster’s largest plastic manufacturer, the Viscoloid Company, began making celluloid toys.

Injection Molding

Then in the 1930s another invention put Leominster on the path of birthing the plastic pink flamingo. A German-American named Samuel Foster started a company called Foster Grant. In 1931 he visited a New York factory and saw an injection molding machine. He immediately ordered several and had them shipped to Worcester. He then had a team of mechanics and engineers spend two years modifying them so they worked.

In 1937, Foster Grant churned out 20 million sunglasses. The next year, Tupperware started up in Leominster.

Don Featherstone

Featherstone continued to design products for Union Products, and by 1996 rose to part-owner and chief executive officer.

He may have been the only corporate CEO to have 57 pink flamingoes in his yard. Or to wear matching outfits with his wife, who made them by hand, from the late 1970s onward.

Imitation pink flamingoes began to challenge the primacy of Featherstone’s bird. So in 1986 Featherstone inscribed his signature in the original plastic mold so people could tell the real from the knock-off. Today they’re known as “Featherstones.”

Avant Garde?

Not everyone embraced the plastic pink flamingo. Some people viewed them as tacky and tasteless. And some homeowner’s associations banned them because they supposedly drove down property values.

But the same year that Featherstone became Union Products CEO, he won the Ig Nobel Art Prize for his design of the plastic pink flamingo. Hipsters had adopted the flamingo to poke fun at ideas of high art and tastefulness.

In 1979, for example, University of Wisconsin students had planted a thousand pink flamingoes on the lawn in front of the dean’s office. Thirty years later, the town’s common council designated the plastic pink flamingo as the city’s official bird.

By 1994, the Gay Games featured an event dedicated to the pink flamingo. Plastic pink flamingoes began to appear in avant-garde art galleries.

In the late 1990s, Featherstone’s plastic pink flamingo appeared in the gift shop of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. And Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts also has a pair in its collection, though not on display.

An animated Disney feature, Gnomeo & Juliet, in 2011 featured a pink flamingo named Featherstone. Far less family-friendly was John Waters homage to the lawn ornament, the 1972 film, Pink Flamingos.

The Death and Rebirth of the Plastic Pink Flamingo

Don Featherstone retired in 2000, and Union Products quietly took his signature off the plastic pink flamingo mold.

But connoisseurs of the bauble of bad taste noticed.

A campaign to boycott non-Featherstone flamingos started, spurred on by the Museum of Bad Art and the Annals of Improbable Research. “How can you remove an artist’s signature from the work he created? It may be legal, but it isn’t right,” said Parker McGurl, a Museum of Bad Art spokesman.

But Union Products would only last another six years before closing down for good – and stopping production of the plastic pink flamingo – in 2016.

A few years later the Cado Company of Fitchburg bought the rights to the Featherstone plastic pink flamingo and continues to manufacture them.

Don Featherstone died on June 22, 2015.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Johnny Appleseed, The Real Reason He Wandered

Johnny Appleseed wasn’t quite a New England version of St. Francis, wandering the countryside in rags, scattering apple seeds and befriending woodland creatures.

Oh he did wear rags, he did love animals and he did bring apples to thousands of people. And he certainly roamed the newly settled frontier.

But he did it to make money selling apples for hard cider.

And Johnny Appleseed died a wealthy man.

John Chapman birthplace in Leominster, Mass.

Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Appleseed was born John Chapman in Leominster, Mass., on Sept. 26, 1774. You can hardly miss him if you visit the city. His birthplace has a granite marker and a billboard, streets and schools bear his name and a wooden statue of him stands in City Hall.

He only lived in Leominster a few years, though. His mother died when he was very young, and his father moved to Longmeadow, Mass., and remarried. Along came 10 half-siblings, and Johnny and a half-brother left the crowded house around 1796.

At that time, New England farmers began to head west in great number, looking for better soil and bigger farms. Life on the frontier wasn’t easy, and often farmers only had hard cider to quench their thirst for an alcoholic beverage.

Photograph of John Chapman in the 1840s.

Johnny Appleseed saw his opportunity. He had a knack for predicting where the next wave of settlement would go, and he began to plant apple seeds in anticipation of the next settlers.

He didn’t scatter seeds for orchards, but planted nurseries — in western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Johnny Appleseed eventually traveled as far as Ontario, Illinois and West Virginia.

Once he planted his nurseries, he built fences around them. Then he hired someone to take care of them and returned every year or two to check on his trees. The caretaker sold seeds and saplings.

He wandered because he had to to buy up inexpensive land before the next group of customers settled the frontier.

Apples

The apple industry created the myth that Johnny Appleseed brought a healthful, delicious fruit to pioneer farmers.

Johnny Appleseed

In truth, his apples had one purpose, and it wasn’t to make pies and crumbles. Farmers could only make hard cider from them.

Johnny Appleseed’s apples didn’t come from grafted trees, but from seedlings. Henry David Thoreau once wrote that apples from seeds were “sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.”

Eight years before he died, the financial panic of 1837 took a toll on his wealth. Nevertheless, Johnny Appleseed died a rich man, owning more than 1,200 acres of prime real estate.

Bit of a Loon

Parts of the Johnny Appleseed myth do have elements of truth to them, though. He did dress in rags, sometimes even in old coffee sacks with holes cut in them for his head and arms.

Stamp.

He did it because he followed the Swedenborgian religion, and believed that the more he suffered in this world the more happiness he would experience in the hereafter. According to his obituary, he ‘submitted to every privation with cheerfulness and content, believing that in so doing he was securing snug quarters hereafter.’

Johnny Appleseed often stopped in frontier cabins to spread ‘some fresh news from Heaven.’

According to Harper’s magazine, he once lingered to hear a longwinded preacher speak to a crowd of people from a stump he used as a lectern.

The preacher urged his listeners to give up extravagance.

“Where now is there a man who, like the primitive Christians, is traveling to heaven barefooted and clad in coarse raiment?” the preacher asked

Exasperated, Johnny Appleseed put his bare foot on the stump and said, “Here’s your primitive Christian!”

Folk Hero

Johnny Appleseed shared his trees with Native Americans during his travels, and converted some of them to his religion. They in turn taught him how to heal with herbs and plants, and even hostile tribes left him alone.

He had some other eccentric beliefs, which at least one biographer attributes to a kick on the head from a horse. For example, he thought it cruel to ride a horse or chop down a tree.

Gravesite of John Chapman.

He also liked to give ribbons to small girls and entertain small boys by walking on hot coals.

Eventually his travels brought him a reputation as a healer and a folk saint.

Johnny Appleseed died around 1845, though the exact date of his death is disputed. He left his valuable nurseries to his sister.

Today, an annual Johnny Appleseed Festival draws an average of 10,000 people – held in the fall, of course, around the time of the apple harvest.

Read more surprising apple history along with historic apple recipes in the New England Historical Society’s e-book, 29 Historic New England Apple Recipes. Available now for only $2.99 from Amazon.

With thanks to MassMoments. Image of Johnny Appleseed gravesite, By Rochelle Karp – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21439692; Apples by By Leslie Seaton from Seattle, WA, USA – Newtown pippins, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33880381. This story was updated in 2022.

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The New England Teachers Who Invented New Math in 1788

By 1885 Americans were ready for new math. In 1773, the sixth edition of Thomas Dilworth’s classic Schoolmaster’s Assistant was the dominant textbook of the day for students in American grammar schools.

Dilworth was a British cleric and schoolteachers used his book as they delivered lessons to their pupils. It was the most widely used text for teaching math. (Dilworth also covered a host of other topics.)

$A New Hampshire $1 note from 1780$

A New Hampshire $1 note from 1780

But with the Revolution came a certain amount of hostility to many things British. And Dilworth’s books were very British indeed. His examples of diverting stories for children had a British flavor. His lessons in arithmetic used British units of measure and currency as measurements to be mastered.

While pounds, shillings and pence were still in use in America, the Congress was phasing them out and gradually transitioning people to a system of dollars and cents. And people needed to have their classrooms focus on the new money rather than the old.

New Math

It was too much to ask many school teachers to master the new currency themselves and present it to their students. A new text was needed. While any number of small texts were published and adopted in pockets of the country, Nicholas Pike was the first to put forward a book, in 1788, that would be widely adopted, the New and Complete System of Arithmetic – Composed for the Use of the Citizens of the United States.

Pike was born in 1743 in Somersworth, N.H., and had taught in York, Maine before settling in Newburyport, Mass. Harvard-educated, Pike served as magistrate in Newburyport during the Revolution as well as selectman and head of the grammar school. Pike drafted his book and sent it to George Washington, asking that he might dedicate it to him. Washington replied that he was honored, but asked Pike to dedicate it to a scholar of New England.

“It gives me the highest satisfaction to find the Arts and Sciences making a progress in any Country; but when I see them advancing in the rising States of America I feel a peculiar pleasure: and in my opinion, every effort of Genius, and all attempts towards improving useful knowledge ought to meet with encouragement in this Country. Your performance is of the most useful and beneficial kind, and, from the opinion of those Gentlemen who have inspected it I have not the least doubt but that it is a very valuable one.”

Pike secured endorsements from Dartmouth, Harvard and Yale colleges for his work. That began a long run as a successful textbook.

More New Math

Pike was not alone in the field of math publishing, however. In 1799 Nathan Daboll of Groton, Conn. published his Daboll’s schoolmaster’s assistant: being a plain, practical system of arithmetic, adapted to the United States. Daboll was a teacher in New London, Conn. who taught navigation to sailors there. In the 1770s he began publishing almanacs, some featuring pro-American propaganda to help promote the Revolution.

After the war Daboll’s work became some famous he earned a mention in Herman Mellville’s Moby Dick, and when someone wanted a short-hand expression to mean that something was correct and beyond question, he said it was: “According to Daboll.”

Daniel Adams was another contributor to the Americanization of math texts when he published his The Scholar’s Arithmetic, or Federal Accountant in Leominster, Mass. In 1801. Adams was born in Townsend and became a physician in Leominster when he published the book. It gained widespread use for over 25 years. Adams himself was a legislator in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire and his life took him to Boston and then finally to New Hampshire where he settled in Keene.

Publishers even tried to update Dilworth’s old text for the American market, but it could not regain its position of dominance.

Hat tip to: The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States, By Florian Cajori. This story last updated in 2022.

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Secrets to a Long Life From Holders of The Boston Post Cane

When the Town of Westmoreland, N.H., gave its Boston Post Cane to 113-year-old Mary Ray in 2008, she was believed to be the third oldest person in the world. Born in 1895 on Prince Edward Island, she was the second oldest when she died two months short of her 115^th birthday. A lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, she often ate cake and ice cream after a game.

Mary Ray

Year after year in town after New England town, the board of selectmen presents the gold-knobbed cane to a very old person. It often hapens in the presence of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. Often the recipient receives gifts or pins or plaques. A newspaper photographer snaps a photo and a reporter records a witty or poignant comment.

Usually the reporter asks the secret to a long life. The answers then range from luck to clean living to daily exercise. An awful lot of Boston Post Cane holders seem to love the Boston Red Sox.

On May 5, 2011, 100-year-old Ruth Green threw out the first pitch at Fenway Park. The Lunenberg, Mass., holder of the cane, she had seen six Red Sox titles.

Boston Post Cane

Edwin Grozier

The tradition of awarding the Boston Post Cane to a town’s oldest resident began in 1909, when Boston Post owner Edwin Grozier dreamed up the publicity stunt. The Post reigned as the most popular newspaper in New England for a century until it folded in 1956. William Beals founded it in 1831 along with Charles G. Greene, younger brother of the Revolutionary War general Nathaniel Greene.

The newspaper distributed the cane to 700 towns in the Post’s circulation area in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. They were made by J.F. Fradley and Co., a New York manufacturer, from ebony shipped in 7-foot lengths from the Congo. A 14-karat engraved gold knob topped the cane.

The towns only loaned the canes. Upon the recipient’s death, they were to be returned to the town. Sometimes that didn’t happen. Two Massachusetts towns, Dover and Watertown, lost the canes for a century before finding them and reviving the tradition. The cane belonging to Lee, Mass., was found in the rubbish in Charlton, Mass., after 50 years. Farmingdale, Maine, recently got its cane back in two pieces, so now the recipient gets a plaque, as do many. Someone stole the Leominster, Mass., cane from the town offices during a renovation project. It later turned up on eBay. The town contacted the seller and ‘reacquired’ it.

Controversies

The Boston Post Cane Information Center has tracked down the canes from 494 towns of the original 700. The site reports several town, such as Florida, Mass., never got canes but made up their own.

According to the site, the Town of Barre, Mass., in October 2015 presented canes to Bess E. Difley and Warner F. “Bill” Smith, the only two recipients known to be born on the very same day — July 29. 1914.

John Smith, first Boston Post Cane recipient in Grafton, N.H.

In Hudson, Mass., two people born the same year got into a fight over who should have the cane. The selectmen wrote to the Boston Post, asking what they should do. The newspaper told them to do what they wanted, so they retired the cane. Then Hudson brought it back in 2004 and gave it to Col. Adelbert M. Mossman, 96.

In the early 1970s, Hampton, N.H., retired the cane. Selectman Ashton Norton called it too much of a pain. “We were having problems with people in nursing homes, and there was no way to find out who was the oldest or who was a native,” Norton said. “Then we’d give the cane out, and we’d get complaints that we didn’t give it to the right person. It got to be so much trouble the board decided to leave it in the town office building.”

Fear of the Cane

“People started to fear getting the cane,” said Hampton Town Clerk Jane Kelley. “The cane would be given out, and within a week, that person would be dead. It was awful.”

Nantucket put a stop to the tradition around 1998, when it became clear the cane was not a good omen for its residents.

In April 2006 the Bow, N.H., Board of Selectmen extended the time between the death of a Boston Post Cane holder and awarding the honor to a new citizen from 45 days to 60 days, ‘for respect and grievance purposes.’

In Unity, Maine, several people declined the cane because they didn’t want their neighbors knowing their ages.

Patten, Mass., gave the Boston Post Cane in 2006 to Lillian Perry Wheaton, age 96, at their Pioneer Days celebration. Lillian refused to take it home with her because she considered it bad luck.

Longevity Secrets

Others enjoy receiving the cane, especially if they get a party in their honor. As her 108th birthday approached in September 2016, Mary Cousins of Deer Isle, Maine, said she didn’t know the secret. “All I know is that I’m here, and I’m very thankful and happy for that.”

Cane holders often credited their longevity to work, genetics, God’s will, friends, family and exercise. In March 2011, George Barner received the cane from Kennebunk, Maine, at 102. He attributed his long life to playing tennis and not smoking. Gordon Maddix of Berwick, Maine, forced himself to walk every day.

When Virginia Day Zimmerman of Monson, Maine, received the cane, she still swam every morning from Memorial Day to her birthday at the beginning of October.

Florence Brayson in Exeter, Maine, shared the secret to a long and happy life: Keep your mouth shut and mind your business. Anne-Marie Veilleux, 99, of Jay, Maine, said she never let anything bother her. Myrtle Mileage, of Mexico, Maine, said, “I just do as I please. I hear only what I want to hear.”

In 2009, Foxborough, Mass., passed its cane to Harry Cederlund, age 100. He said he lived long because he ate well, didn’t smoke or drink and left the window open at night to let in fresh air.

But take heart, smokers and drinkers. Lillie Young Weissenberger received the cane in 2011 in Washington, Maine, at 94. Asked if she drank or smoke or caroused, she smiled and said, “Oh, yes. We hung around with racing people, remember. We did all of that!”

Boston Post Cane: Not Funny

Some Boston Post cane holders demonstrated it’s never too late to get started.

Maude Thomas of Falmouth, Mass., received the cane at age 108 in 2010. She worked as an office manager at an architectural firm in Boston into her 80’s, enrolled in Harvard University and received her degree at age 75.

Doris “Granny D.” Haddock got the cane by Dublin, N.H., at age 95. She became famous when she walked across the continental United States between the ages of 88 and 90. She then lived another five years after receiving the cane.

Goffstown, N.H., gave the cane to May Gruber on her 100^th birthday in 2012. She had led the Pandora knitwear company, run a 10K at age 65 and held a sign during the Occupy Wall Street protest at 99.

Becket, Mass., gave its cane to Margaret Peg Lynch, a sitcom pioneer who created the Ethel and Albert comedy series. When she got the cane, she thought about doing a show on Ethel and Albert getting older. But, she said, she couldn’t think of anything funny.

This story about the Boston Post Cane was updated in 2022.

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Brownie Wise, The Brains Behind Tupperware

In 1950, Earl Tupper was sitting in his Leominster, Mass., office struggling with how to get his business off the ground when Brownie Wise called.

He never met Brownie Wise, but she phoned to tell him about a party. What happened next changed every kitchen in America.

Brownie Wise

Earl Tupper was born in Berlin, N.H., in 1907. His family moved to Lowell, Mass., where Earl grew up. He took a failed stab at a tree maintenance business. By 1946, Earl had his own firm in Leominster, making and selling plastic containers for storing food.

Birth of Tupperware

At the end of World War II, DuPont had distributed blocks of polyethylene to plastics companies. It had mass produced the stuff for war uses, but it hoped to find new uses for the material.

Tupper had a stroke of genius. He contacted DuPont and asked if they would send him a sample of the polyethylene before they added stiffening agents to it. The pliable plastic was exactly what he was looking for, and he shaped it into sealable food storage containers. The containers had a characteristic ‘burp’ when sealed: Tupperware.

Tupper had his plastic bowls selling in hardware and department stores, but they didn’t sell well – everywhere except one little Florida company that couldn’t get enough of his bowls. Why? he wondered. And so he contacted the company called Tupperware Patio Parties, run by Brownie Wise.

Brownie Wise

Brownie Wise was Tupper’s opposite, outgoing and vivacious. Born and raised in Georgia, she had married a Ford executive and moved to Dearborn, Mich. There, her marriage soured and she divorced.

She worked as a sales representative for Stanley Home Products, a Massachusetts-based company that sold cleaning goods through in-home sales parties. Brownie Wise quickly spotted the opportunity Tupper was missing.

His product needed a personal touch for people to understand it. At an in-home party, the product could be thrown on the floor to demonstrate its durability and tossed around to show how light it was. Sales reps could also show firsthand the Tupperware ‘burp’ that seals in the flavor of food.

Brownie Wise moved to Florida and started her patio parties company. At that point Earl noticed how much product she moved. During their first phone conversation, Earl invited Brownie to visit him in Massachusetts. Once they met, he knew she was right.

In the home, there would be no inhibitions or distractions. Housewives could picture his modernistic designs right in their own kitchens. And the sales force was there for the asking.

Tupperware Parties

After getting a taste of economic freedom during World War II, many women wanted something other than homemaking. Tupperware sales parties were perfect.

Earl and Brownie created Tupperware Home Parties Inc., and Brownie became vice president. Earl would make the product, Brownie would sell it.

Over the course of several years, Brownie created a whole new kind of sales network, one that relied on fun sales conventions. She called them jubilees and filled them with skits and awards. Blenders and other kinds of incentives were added to the commissions, and a whole new type of sales structure rose up. Brownie’s all-woman sales force – taken for granted at home – reveled in the praise and celebration at their annual ‘sales jubilees.’

By 1958, business was booming. If only Brownie Wise and Earl had been able to continue their partnership, we can only wonder what might have been. Instead, she got bossy and arrogant. He got jealous and testy. Even though he paid to promote Brownie’s image as a whole new style of female executive, he resented people viewing her as the reason for Tupperware’s success.

Posing with a television at a Tupperware jubilee, 1955.

So, without notice, Earl fired her and sold the company to Rexall Drug Stores. He then divorced his wife and moved to Costa Rica so he could avoid taxes. Tupperware rolled right along without either of them.

At first, Rexall talked of scrapping Brownie Wise’s innovations, like the sales jubilee. But employee after employee told the new company president that such a move would be a disaster. Rexall backed off and didn’t mess with success.

Tupperware Phoenix

By the start of 2020, stock analysts left Tupperware Brands for dead because they saw too much debt and excessive costs. The company, though, cut costs and flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people stayed home and cooked more. In December 2020, the financial news network TheStreet called it one of the best stocks of the year, noting, “Shares fell as low as $1.25 in March and recently closed at $36.64.”

Women are still holding Tupperware parties and attending jubilees in countries around the world.

Images: Brownie Wise By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33209984. Tupperware By Melissa Highton – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107261339. Tupperware assortment by By Mark Larson – https://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/3544195739/in/photolist-6pbVV6-cmeS8W-2LD5j4-3cTjz8-7G6C7f-efnHD-efnNX-3ycmba-3ycd3H-5fPENe-9MucPJ-5bt2L1-5kvsKf-6PYFv-49yf1M-w2DHU-7AYtpX-5krceZ-7tT9ou-dCeab2-4uWcqu-tYPJV-9VpsFB-4Zzu1U-4z2aJm-4qADX-7D4Psn-8nznXp-nnCoK-dD7A4a-btBHP9-7df4Kq-nnCij-dzijSo-5r5nta-5ETEW3-9kU7WF-6PYFu-4vVdGx-3ankiN-7EYAVh-7EUKRT-5ARNme-4JWVWK-5AW4W7-5ARMKR-6J7sFQ-5ARN6e-6NFim4-5ARNGZ-2Vo5E5, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28295511.

This story about Brownie Wise was updated in 2022.

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Flashback Video: Leominster Labor Day Parade, 1906

The people of Leominster, Mass., celebrated the 19^th national Labor Day in 1906 with a parade down the center of town. (Leominster wouldn’t be a city until 1915.) President Grover Cleveland had declared the first Labor Day in 1887 after 11 were killed in the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago the previous year. Cleveland was responding to pressure from unions, which had advocated a special day to show support for the labor movement.

In the video above, the camera first shows streets draped with bunting and a decorated grandstand. It then pans to the crowded street, filled with men in hats and women and little girls in light dresses. The parade starts with decorated automobiles, then horse-drawn fire engines, followed by horse-drawn carts and assorted floats.

The Edison Manufacturing Company produced the film. At the time, Thomas Edison merchandised his cameras, kinetoscopes and batteries with such “actualities” — short films of news events, scenic views and people at work and play.

Leominster was a small farming community until the Fitchburg and Worcester Railroad opened in 1850. Factories sprang up along the Monoosnoc Brook and Nashua River, making pianos, paper and combs, combs, combs. By 1903, waves of Irish, French and Italian immigrants swelled Leominster’s population.

Obadiah Hills established the comb industry in 1779 when he started making horn combs in his kitchen. By 1853, 24 comb factories in Leominster employed 146 people. The invention of celluloid in 1868 revolutionized the industry. Comb-making expanded rapidly in Leominster, which manufactured most of the combs made in America. Leominster became known as Comb City.

Monument Square in Leominster, 1907

Labor Days in Leominster

Workers faced economic uncertainty in Leominster in 1901, according to the Labor and Industrial Chronology of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

That year, the Leominster Shirt Co. shut down indefinitely and the Geo. A. Gane Shirt Co. closed for two weeks. The Richardson Piano Case Co. cut wages and the girls employed by B.F. Blodgett & Co. went on strike on account of the forewoman. Workers at Newton & Merriam went on strike for a wage increase and were replaced by strikebreakers. Fire destroyed several factories.

On the plus side, some comb and garment factories ran nights, new factories were being built, equipment was being added to old ones and comb-making companies were being formed.

Workers had more to celebrate on Labor Day in 1907. The comb industry was on the upswing. The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor reported 3,000 horn, celluloid, comb and novelty workers in the Leominster area. Ten comb and novelty companies expanded, incorporated or moved to Leominster in 1907. Workers also asked for, and got, wage increases.

Many factories gave work to women at home. In 1917, the Labor Bulletin of the Massachusetts Department of Labor reported 14 Leominster factories jobbed out the work of attaching hairpins to cards and then sticking gummed labels on them. The schedule of what they earned goes as follows:

This story last updated in 2022.

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