Rhode Island History

Published by The Rhode Island Historical Society

110 Benevolent Street

Providence, Rhode Island 02906–3152

Robert H. Sloan, Jr., chair

Luther W. Spoehr, vice chair

Mark F. Harriman, treasurer

Peter J. Miniati, secretary

C. Morgan Grefe, executive director

Publications c ommittee

Marcus Nevius, chair

Charlotte Carrington-Farmer

Catherine DeCesare

J. Stanley Lemons

Craig Marin

Seth Rockman

Luther Spoehr

Evelyn Sterne staff

Richard J. Ring, editor

J. D. Kay, digital imaging specialist

Silvia Rees, publications assistant

3 Introduction and An Interview with Anne Conway r ichard J. r ing

13 The Rise and Fall of the Ballou Textile Empire g erald m . c arbone

47 Forgotten Textile Mills of North Kingstown, Rhode Island: The Sanford Brothers’ Mills Jeroen van den h urk o PP osite : Entrance to the Museum of Work & Culture, photo by Carol Dandrade cover: Facade of the Museum of Work & Culture back cover: Detail of The Mill Floor, photo by Deb Boucher i nside back cover: Detail of the 1929 Parlor, photo by Carol Dandrade

Rhode Island History is a peer-reviewed journal published two times a year by the Rhode Island Historical Society at 110 Benevolent Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02906-3152. Postage is paid at Providence, Rhode Island. Society members receive each issue as a membership benefit. Institutional subscriptions to Rhode Island History are $25.00 annually. Individual copies of current and back issues are available from the Society for $12.50 (price includes postage and handling).

Our articles are discoverable on ebscohost research databases. Manuscripts and other correspondence should be sent to editor@rihs.org.

The Rhode Island Historical Society assumes no responsibility for the opinions of contributors.

© The Rhode Island Historical Society Rhode Island History (issn 0035–4619)

As the Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS) turns 200 in 2022, its Museum of Work & Culture (MoWC) turns twenty-five. To contemplate the former is a stretch for the average imagination; understanding the life and times of 1822 eludes our immediate grasp. The past, as the saying goes, is a foreign country, but twenty-five years is well within living memory—some might say it seems like yesterday, or perhaps the day before. Anniversaries, however, provide us with natural moments of reflection, and, frankly, if we have learned anything in our 200th anniversary year, it is that if we don’t chronicle our past, others will never know how, from the insider perspective, our organizations developed.

The following is not a comprehensive history but rather a brief sketch of the MoWC at twenty-five, just to jog the memory. It is assembled from letters, articles, and early interviews—the tools of the history trade. We have included a short interview with Director Anne Conway in which she thinks back on her personal reminiscences and shares her vision of future projects and programs for this extraordinary community museum.

Following the City of Woonsocket’s centennial celebration in 1988, during which Mayor Charles C. Baldelli (in office 1985–89) identified the community’s need to preserve Woonsocket’s heritage, community mem- bers rallied around the idea of a museum that would preserve and share the city’s history and culture.1 As with the development of any museum, it took years of planning and effort between the idea and the reality. In fact, it took the support of three mayors nearly ten years to see the project to its fruition. Baldelli, “along with the city Planning and Development Director, N. David Bouley, proceeded to convince the members of the Corridor Commission to support the proposed plan to locate a labor museum in Woonsocket.” Baldelli felt that the museum “had to become an integral part of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor.” Baldelli’s successor, Mayor Francis L. Lanctot (in office 1989–96), agreed that the community needed a permanent space to honor the city’s unique cultural and industrial heritage.

Energized by the support of local elected officials, a committee formed in 1989 quickly hired Christopher Chadbourne & Associates, a renowned exhibit design firm based in Boston, and the Hadley Corporation, an exhibit design firm from Buffalo, New York. The gathering of information and artifacts commenced. In 1990, Governor Edward DiPrete promised $270,000 of bond funds, but hard economic times delayed payment. Undaunted, the Woonsocket Industrial Development Corporation, the City of Woonsocket, and the RIHS agreed in 1992 to accelerate the lagging process, notwithstanding Rhode Island’s banking crisis. According to Albert Klyberg, at that time the director, “The Rhode Island Historical Society was honored by the people of Woonsocket with a request that it sponsor a grant application to the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant became the catalyst for the Museum of Work & Culture and [the exhibition] La Survivance. In response to the grant, contributions were made by the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, area businesses and foundations, organized labor, and individuals.”2

A total of $3 million was raised to renovate the cityowned Barnai Worsted Company mill and to construct nine permanent exhibits and a changing gallery.

One of the first decisions the committee had to make was the selection of a historic building in which to locate this museum dedicated to their industrial and immigrant past. The initial site discussed was the Falls Yarn Mill, an early rubblestone mill built in 1850 and overlooking the river, but as plans evolved, the focus shifted next door to the old Barnai Worsted Company Dye Works, built circa 1915.3 Barnai Worsted manufactured woolen goods for hard-wearing military garments, as well as for men’s fine-fashion clothing. But by 1924, the original Barnai partners were bankrupt, and after a succession of owners and managers, Bar- nai Worsted joined other New England textile producers that sought cheap labor in the South, relocating to South Carolina in the late 1960s. In 1968, the Lincoln Textile Company, a manufacturer of women’s wear, purchased the site to use as its dye house, employing about thirty-five workers. After more than two decades of use, increasingly restrictive environmental regulations led to its closure in 1990. It was just four years later that the museum committee selected the building for its project, and the rehabilitation of the property commenced in 1996 when the group hired E. W. Burman Company for exterior and interior reconfiguration and renovation work. Susan D. Menard, the first woman to hold the office of mayor in Woonsocket (in office 1995–2009), had predicted its opening during her first term, and indeed the doors opened on October 10, 1997.

In its first year, the MoWC welcomed 16,000 visitors. The permanent exhibits on the first floor in 1998 were The Farmhouse, Precious Blood Church4, the Mill

Floor, and Baseball and Mill Life (which depicted the lives of players on mill-owned baseball teams and featured memorabilia from local sports hero and member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Napoleon Lajoie). On the second floor were the gallery for changing exhibits, the Independent Textile Union Hall for lectures, an exhibit on FDR and the New Deal, the Catholic School Classroom, Main Street, the Triple Decker (exterior only), and the Slater Club.

In 2000, the museum installed a figure, more of a statue than a mannequin, of Sister Emilie in the Catholic school classroom to more equitably represent the religious (nuns and brothers, as well as priests) from eleven orders who taught in the more than two dozen Catholic schools in the area since 1869. These schools were not only in Woonsocket but also in Burrillville, Harrisville, Pascoag, Mapleville, Cumberland, Albion, Manville, and Nasonville in Rhode Island and Blackstone and Bellingham in Massachusetts. A raffle to support the project raised $25,000 and thus was born the MoWC’s successful annual appeal and raffle for general operations.

In 2002, the museum staff added the 1929 parlor interior to the exhibit within the Triple Decker exterior, funded by a $25,000 grant from the National Heritage Corridor Commission. And in 2004, a section of the mule spinner on the Mill Floor was removed and Finlay’s Corner was installed to create a space for hands-on education and living history presentations.

In 2005, after having been lost for years and only recently found on an East Greenwich horse farm, Rhode Island’s boxcar from the famous Merci Train was sent to be restored. According to Menard, the newly restored car was now to serve as “a thank-you to all our veterans and a history lesson in this city.”

In 2007, at the museum’s tenth anniversary, a group of strongly committed community members formed the Museum of Work & Culture Preservation Foundation to support the MoWC. Yet more volunteers came together to collect and install a sixty-six-volume archive to commemorate the heritage of Catholic schools in Rhode Island. Lastly, the foundation announced the “treasury of life” initiative, offering a place for family mementos to be kept and displayed. Thus, at ten years in, the commitment of the community was as strong as ever, and the museum was digging even deeper into the personal stories of the peoples of not only Woonsocket but also the Blackstone River Valley as a whole.

The second decade of the MoWC saw a steady flow of programs, temporary exhibits, and new initiatives, including a self-guided tour in French (2011) and the creation of all-ability programming (2014). But, it was another anniversary, the twentieth, in which new technologies came to the fore. In 2017, the MoWC launched its third decade by installing the new permanent exhibit Mills Along the Blackstone, which includes a multi-touch table with interactive maps and histories of twenty-five mills, and the Mill Memory Bank, a kiosk containing video interviews and profiles of former mill workers from the area. Built on broad and deep research into the mills using personal stories, directories, newspapers, and maps, this hightech and high-touch exhibit was the first constructed with the ardent support of the MoWC Preservation

Foundation. From its unveiling, it was a success, entrancing visitors of all ages and abilities and affirming for the staff and volunteers that the stories told in the museum, as well as the museum building itself, were ideal for experimenting with bringing emerging museum approaches into conversation with traditional exhibit design.

This year, to mark the MoWC’s celebration at a quarter century, I interviewed5 my colleague Anne Conway, who started as the manager of the museum’s store when it opened in 1997 but soon became co-director with Raymond Bacon in 1999, and has been director since 2013. This, of course, means this fall also is Conway’s twenty-fifth anniversary with the museum and the RIHS.

Unfortunately, the day before this interview, we learned of the passing of former mayor Susan D. Menard, who had been so instrumental to the growth and success of the museum, so we began the session speaking of her. Conway shared that she had a close working relationship with Menard and that Menard always paid attention to the museum’s needs. “She’s the one who carried the museum project to the opening in 1997. She worked very closely with Al Klyberg to make sure the museum would receive proper funding,” Conway said. With Menard’s help and connections, Conway continued, “we received substantial support from CVS and from the unions [AFL-CIO and some smaller unions]. I knew her to be a very fair person, and I think she loved the museum; she was very dedicated to its success, and I am just...really, really sad.”

Conway’s experiences with the museum are so vast and varied, it was hard to know where to begin, so

I asked her about the very beginning: “In your own words—what do you remember, where were you when you first heard about the plans for the MoWC, how did you get involved, etc.?”

“I am from Quebec City,” Conway said. Her family was in the hospitality business, and Conway Tours (her future husband’s family business) was one of their clients, which is how she met her husband, Peter.

“When I got married, I was a student at Laval University and then transferred to Rhode Island College. I wanted to be a teacher and was pursuing a primary and special education degree. When I transferred to RIC, my English was very limited, and so I figured, why not teach French?”

Conway graduated with a degree in French literature, but to be certified in Rhode Island, she had to take further courses and also do her student teaching—this while also starting a family (she has three children). She recalled first hearing about the museum project around 1992 or 1993, about the time she had her third child. “As a matter of fact,” she recalled, “my first time at the RIHS was in 1993, when my husband was launching Gray Line of Rhode Island [a travel tour company], and he hosted a reception at the John Brown House with Buddy Cianci as a special guest.” After that, she began to read about the developing museum project in the Woonsocket Call. She ran into Al Klyberg at an event at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet and informed Al that she was very interested in a position at the MoWC. “I didn’t really care what position, I wanted a foot in the door,” she said. They were looking for a store manager, and since Conway grew up in a family business (her parents owned a motel just outside of Quebec City that was popular with tourists) customer service was “in the blood,” so to speak.

“Not long after I started, I began to fill some of the [administrative] gaps. We were so new, and nobody really knew how the RIHS would administer a museum outside of Providence,” she said. “We did not have all of the technology that keeps us connected today.” Conway felt that they needed to connect to the community and that “we couldn’t just open our doors and wait until tourists came in...if we really wanted to have visitors, we needed to create programs, we needed to have fundraising events, and before I knew it, these were all things that I wanted to do for the museum.” Now we were getting into an area that Conway is clearly passionate about: her community. So, my next questions were, “What did you enjoy most about community engagement? In what ways did you pursue that goal?”

“I think it was, first of all, really getting to know the staff that had been hired and their connections,” she said. “Woonsocket is really a small town, and everybody knows someone, and it was just amazing—if I said, ‘You know what? It would be really great to work with a local graphic artist because we could use a rack card to promote the museum,’ and then one of our front desk clerks said, ‘Oh, my husband can do that, he is a graphic artist for CVS,’ and then you start knowing people there [CVS]. And then you would turn around and say, ‘You know it would be great to have music at this event,’ and [someone would say] ‘Oh, I know this woman, Jean McKenna-O’Donnell, who lives here in Woonsocket, she is a jazz singer, and her brother is the great Dave McKenna, the jazz musician,’ and so the next thing you know we have both Jean and Dave performing at a museum event. It amazed me, the talents that we had there, and how much people were willing to share because it was a new museum and they wanted to see it succeed.”

But the MoWC is more than a museum about the community. It is a museum deeply connected to the City of Woonsocket, both historically and in the present. So I then asked Conway to describe the MoWC’s relationship with the city.

“I think the relationship with the city, throughout the different administrations, has only gotten stronger over the years,” she said. “I think it is also due to the fact that we have a very close relationship with the City Council and that they are always willing to help the museum...I always say, ‘The museum is Switzerland.’ That’s how I like to describe it....Every mayor that I have worked with has always been supportive of the museum, and the City Councils, too; they often see the museum as a great asset to the city.”

I asked if the museum had the same sort of support from the business community.

“Yes, the support of the business community through the years has been amazing,” Conway noted. “Not only are they willing to sponsor events and fundraisers, but the majority of our business owners personally attend museum events and programs. Many of them also serve on the Museum Preservation Foundation.”

Between the collaborations, the stories, and the projects, Conway’s work has touched so many areas, but I wanted to know what she most enjoyed.

“I’m project driven. When I have a goal in mind,

I love to be able to reach that goal...right now my team is working on completing two exhibits that we’re going to open in time for the museum’s 25th Anniversary Gala on October 15,” she said. “After an exhibit is ready and open, people can enjoy it—that is what I take the most pride in.” Looking ahead, I asked, what are your aspirations for the museum?

“I want the museum to continue to be a welcoming place for people of all provenance [origin], of all ages and ability; to continue to be a place where people can learn about an important chapter of Rhode Island’s history,” Conway said. “We also need to continue to be relevant for our visitors and patrons. One of my goals is to continue to bring exhibits in to expand the theme of the museum. We have a museum that has an amazing story base...we are very lucky that it was planned and structured so that we can take stories and make them more current. With immigration changing—when you think of the community, and what it was twenty-five or thirty years ago, and what it is today—the demographics have changed. I do want our fifth-graders who visit with their classmates to see themselves reflected in our museum.”

The New Exhibitions

Hollywood Comes to Woonsocket. Over the twentieth century, Woonsocket’s six theaters—the Laurier, the Bijou, the Rialto, the Music Hall, the Park, and the Stadium—hosted a dazzling variety of acts, including vaudeville, Francophone performers, blockbuster films, and a multitude of live performances. Over the past seventy years, floods, fires, and economic hardship have taken a toll on the theaters and on Woonsocket. Today, only the Stadium Theatre and Chan’s “eggrolls and jazz” remain. Both of these venues have kept the city’s cultural scene alive. The Stadium Theatre now functions as a community arts center, and Chan’s continues to host acts with national profiles and local roots, such as Duke Robillard. Hollywood Comes to Woonsocket reveals the city’s history as a national and even international venue—from Harry Houdini’s demonstration of “Metamorphosis” in 1895 to the East Coast premiere of There’s Something about Mary in 1998.

Flowing Through Time: Nature, Industry, and Communities of the Blackstone River. This exhibit fosters an understanding of the stories and transformations of the Blackstone River, not only through its role in the industrial development of the area but also its relationship to different communities throughout time. The addition of environmental and ecological components tell a part of the story that history museums often do not address. Commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Zap the Blackstone in 2022, this exhibit also contains film footage and photographs of the groundbreaking river cleanup project spearheaded by 10,000 volunteers and several organizations in 1972.

1. The information in this section is from Raymond H. Bacon, “Toward the New Millennium, 1988–2000” in Woonsocket Rhode Island: A Centennial History 1888-2000, The Millennium Edition (Woonsocket, RI: Woonsocket Centennial Commission, 2000).

2. Albert Klyberg, Foreword to La Survivance: A Companion to the Exhibit at the Museum of Work & Culture by Anita Rafael (Providence, RI: RIHS, 1997).

3. This section excerpted from “The Museum Building” in La Survivance: A Companion to the Exhibit at the Museum of Work & Culture by Anita Rafael (Providence, RI: RIHS, 1997), 45.

4. The oldest French Canadian Catholic parish in Woonsocket, leveled by a storm in 1876, rebuilt in 1881.

5. Interview took place on September 21, 2022. All quotes are transcribed from the recording, and text in brackets are my additions for clarification.

GERALD M. CARBONE