The Future….
Simeon had a home built for his son George Herbert as a wedding present in 1878..
George Herbert Clark (1848-1924)
George Herbert Clark…
George Herbert Clark would take over from his father …
Family…
Celia Carr was married to George Herbert Clark
Celia Carr descended from one of the earliest settlers in Rhode Island…
George Perry Clark: 9th Generation (1879-1984)…
George Perry Clark…
George Herbert Clark’s son, George Perry Clark in overalls….
Brother Henry, Garfield, affectionally referred to as “Shan”, Sister Harriet, George P.,and Florence, ready for the future….
Anxious to get to work….
First a little schooling…
Providence Journal January 6, 1918. Quoting George P. Clark: “I had been attending the East Greenwich Academy, and had established an elastic fabric business in a small way, with eight old looms, that I set up and operated in a little shop in Providence. In 1902 the business was removed to Shannock, and we started the manufacture of elastic webbing with 10 looms…. From that small beginning, the business has expanded, until now there are 62 looms in operation, and we have room for 20 more, that will soon be added to the equipment when the present force of 100 or more hands will be increased to the requisite number”.
Marriage to Anne O’Neil
Young George P.’s first crew!
Ready to go…..
Evolving….
Management…
George Perry Clark With Workers…
The Office….
George P. Clark: (1918)—“Shannock had ever been an ideal village, peopled by industrious, contented, and harmonious folk. Largely, I might say, almost wholly, in its early days, it was a community of American born people, the women following then custom that had there obtained, working in the mill from early morning until evening came. There were in time the usual mill settlement incursions of foreign-born, but harmony prevailed, and it has ever since been maintained, even at the present time, when we have among our employees French-Canadians and Germans, who are on the most friendly terms, not withstanding that racially, and because of the war, they might naturally be expected to stand apart from each other”.
Motley Crew…
Hardscrabble….
George P Clark (1918)—-“There’s still a strong reprresention of the old American line, and I doubt if the conditions which exist here can be paralleled in any other manufacturing center in this country. For instance, there is Mrs. Jane Foster, now 72 years of age, who has been steadily employed in the mill for 53 years. In many respects she is most remarkable. She has never lost a day, and is never late in coming to work. invariably, she is at her place 20 minutes before the power is started up in the morning, and 15 minutes before the time when the afternoon work begins. She is an expert skein-spooler, and is so thoroughly interested in her work that we made the suggestion not long ago that she ought to take a two week vacation but she was really peeved, declaring that she knew no reason why she should accept our proposition. Her son and grandson both work in the mill”.
“Then there is the Jordan family, Benjamin and John, in the third generation employed here, and Lewis and his sister Annie, in the fourth generation. The Sherman family is now represented in the fourth generation by Arthur and Clyde Sherman, and the Madison family in the third generation by Fred Madison, whose father was boss spinner for my father for 20 years. His grandfather was an operative in the mill under my grandfather”.—George P. Clark (1918)
Inside the mill…
More posing…
Man and Machine…
The Columbia Narrow Fabric Company….
Product ready for delivery…
Expansion: 1907-1914
Mill Office…
Christmas Card circa 1910
The Water Tower…providing fresh clean water from what the Villagers referred to as the “Boiling Spring”…
Chapter 7: Full Speed Ahead
TBA