Ipswich High School - Tiger Yearbook (Ipswich, MA)

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structed. Following the history of this mill, we see that it ran success- fully for forty years, and in 1868 Mr. Amos Lawrence purchased the property. Under its new head the industry was renamed the Ipswich Mills Company, and the manufac- ture of hosiery was introduced. Thus we see that the history of the textile industries in our town has been a long and interesting one. The picturesque silk and lace indus- tries lasted only a few years, and no attempts were ever made after- ward to reorganize them. On the other hand, the equally historic and interesting hosiery business had developed within half a century from sniall unimportant shops into an influential and vastly organized industry. At one time the huge Ipswich Mills Company was one of the largest of the seamless hosiery mills in the country ; however, with the introduction of full fashioned hosiery seamless hosiery became obsolete and the great company failed in 1928. Since then the Hay- ward Hosiery Company has carried on the tradition of this industry, and we hope that hosiery will con- tinue to give employment to our townspeople in the future. CLASS DAY PARTS. History of the Class of 1937 By Charles Rhodes O N the ninth day of September, of the year nineteen hundred and thirty-three, a timid but deter- mined group of students could be seen ascending the stairs to the “at- tic” of old Manning High. It was the class of “37.” School records reveal that our class, numbering one hundred and fifteen members, was the largest ever to enter the doors of the Man- ning building. Although the system of changing- rooms for each period was at first a bit confusing and straying into a senior English class instead of a freshman algebra class a trifle em- barrassing, we soon became accus- tomed to our new surroundings and settled down to a quiet, uneventful freshman year. Our officers for the year were Marcel Savoy, president; Robert Bamford, vice-president; Mary Laite, secretary; and Alex- ander Robertson, treasurer. Upon returning to school after a short but enjoyable summer vaca- tion, we were again confronted with the annual election of class officers. They were chosen as follows: John Denningham, president ; Albert Langmaid, vice-president; Priscilla Bailey, secretary; and Howard Cowles, treasurer. Not unlike our freshman year, our sophomore year was character- ized by obscurity and inactivity, al- though we did present an assembly play entitled “Grandma Pulls the Strings,” starring Mabel Chambers as Grandma and Helen Perry as Julia, a shy young lass. This was when Mabel Chambers first gave 28

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ployees either returned to their stocking frames or continued with them, for it has been reported that some were carrying on this trade in their homes while working in the lace factory. Others moved to dif- ferent communities, and for the most part, these either settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania, or in Plymouth, New Hampshire, where groups of lace and stocking weav- ers had established themselves. Nevertheless, there remained in Ipswich four small but skilled man- ufacturers. One of them, Mr. Ben- jamin Fewkes, operated a small shop on High Street near his resi- dence ; incidentally, the Peatfield brothers constructed two stocking frames for Mr. Fewkes which were, I believe, the first of their kind made in this country. At the same time Mr. Warner ran a shop lo- cated on the site of the present Damon Block, and Mr. Samuel Hunt and Mr. Charles Bamford both ran shops in their homes. These shops were all small, of course, and each contained only two stocking frames. Soon these four small industries were supplemented by larger ones. The Peatfield brothers had erected the building now known as Hayes’ Tavern and established an under- wear factory. Not long after this Mr. George Heard undertook a knitting business in a building lo- cated at the lower falls near the County Street Bridge. By this time Dr. Manning had constructed some buildings at Willowdale. Two of these which had been used for saw mills burned; however, the third, a stone building, was converted into a woolen factory. In 1863 a mill was erected on the banks of the river at County Street, and the manufacture of yarn was begun. Joseph Ross, Thomas Dodge, and Henry Ordway were named directors. The yarn business was a great success, and five years later the manufacture of hosiery was un- dertaken. In this manner the mill continued in profitable operation until 1873, the year of the great fire of Boston. A great quantity of finished goods from this factory had been stored in warehouses in Bos- ton, all of which was lost in the fire. This great catastrophe forced the insurance companies into bank- ruptcy, and only a few cents were returned on a dollar. Naturally this loss greatly affected the circum- stances of our hosiery mill, and in 1885, after a few unsuccessful years, the mill was shut down. In the meantime the manufac- ture of cotton cloth had continued in an old stone mill situated on the site of the present Ipswich Mills. This industry had been established in 1828 by Augustine Heard, Jo- seph Farley, and George Heard, and at the time the machinery was installed, a new dam had been con- 27

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evidence of her adaptability in old lady parts and anticipated her ex- cellent performance as Aunt Ade- line in the senior play. It was also in this play that the shop boys un- der Mr. M e r s 0 n ' s supervision showed what could be done to pro- vide good stage and lighting effects on the old Manning Hall stage. We had not been long in our junior year before a class meeting was held and the following officers were elected : Alexander Robert- son, president; John Denningham, vice-president; Frank Canney, sec- retary; and Louise Anzuoni, treas- urer. It was during the winter of this year that an innovation in the form of a winter carnival was held at Manning. In the competition for “Snow Queen” among the four classes then attending school, the race was close, but our junior entry, in the person of Miss Bella Des Jardins, emerged victorious. On the day following the thrilling toboggan and ski slides, anybody who ap- peared in school without the scars of battle on his face was in danger of being called a pansy by the more daring of his classmates. Next in line was the question of class rings. A committee of six was elected to take charge of the matter. Deciding that a plain, solid gold ring would be a more practical investment than a ring containing some kind of stone, the committee selected two types of the former, the final choice going to the class as a whole. Apparently the reasoning of the committee was sound, for there have been no remarks of dis- satisfaction to date. The successful efforts of such men as Paganis on the baseball field and Mourikas and Robertson on the gridiron in the junior year, placed us high in the sport world. Through the first four months of our senior year things ran smoothly and on schedule. We had chosen as our leaders John Denningham, president; Albert Langmaid, vice- president; Frank Canney, secre- tary ; and Louise Anzuoni, treas- urer. In January we decided to accept the munificent gift of a new school as bequeathed to us by the philan- thropic class of ’36. Hence, after Christmas vacation, with band playing and flags flying, we marched en masse to our new, sumptuous building on Green Street. When finally settled, we found that we were approximately six weeks behind schedule of the usual school The first event to be held in the new school was a pageant, “The Builders,” given on the evening when the building was thrown open , to the public for inspection. In this pageant we were nobly represented by Fred Benedix with his sheaf of wheat “quite different from the or- dinary head,” Frank Canney, the metallurgist, Robert Love, the poet, and Nate Love as stern and forbid- ding Duty (if you can imagine Nate as stern and forbidding). Margaret Hubbard was the Librarian, and a number of the other girls tripped the boards gracefully to the tune of “slide, slide, one, two, three.” After acquitting ourselves nobly in a school affair, we turned our at- tention to our own class affairs. The program. 29