Amsterdam Woman was Pioneer Union Leader

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette

     An Irish immigrant woman became a leader in the fledgling union movement while living in Amsterdam in the nineteenth century.

Leonora Kearney was born in 1849 in Cork. Her parents, John and Honor Kearney, fled the Irish potato famine and settled in Pierrepont in northern New York where her father worked a farm.

When Leonora was in her early teens, her mother died. Her father married a woman a few years older than his daughter and the two women did not get along.

Young Leonora took lessons from the head of the Colton Girls School and earned a teaching certificate at age sixteen.  Leonora taught school for seven years.

In 1871 she married a house painter and musician, William Barry, who lived in Potsdam. William, too, was born in Ireland and came to Canada when young. He served nine years in the British army including assignments in Gibraltar and the Mediterranean.

The Barrys moved from town to town seeking work. They settled on Amsterdam’s Voorhees Street with their three children.

William Barry died in April 1881. The obituary of the 38-year old said he had suffered lung ailments for two years. He was a “well-known musician” and composer who led the Amsterdam Cornet Band and played in the Thirteenth Brigade Band. The Barrys’ three-year-old daughter also died that year.

Now a widow with two young sons, Leonora could not go back to teaching because only single women were acceptable candidates for teaching positions. She went to work at Pioneer Hosiery, one of Amsterdam’s many knitting mills. It was located on the south side of 31 Main Street, between Market and Church Streets.

Barry wrote. “Day after day, I sat sewing men’s trousers for five cents a dozen.”

In 1884 Barry joined a women’s branch of the Knights of Labor in Amsterdam. There was a knitting mill strike and management lockout of the union in 1886. The mill owners eventually prevailed in ousting the Knights, at least temporarily.

In 1886 Barry attended a Knights of Labor convention in Richmond, Virginia, and was named to the new department of women’s work. Leaving her children with relatives, she traveled the country.

The Biographical Dictionary of Notable American Women described her as tall with a commanding presence, gifted with Irish humor, blue eyes and spontaneity.

Barry advocated equal pay for women and fought against child labor. She spoke against sexual harassment, saying men used the power of their positions to “debauch women and boys.”

In 1888, at Susan B. Anthony’s invitation, Barry spoke to the 40th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention for women, held in Washington, D.C.

In 1890 Leonora married Obediah Read Lake, a printer from St. Louis. Leonora didn’t think married women should work outside the home unless there was economic necessity. She resigned from the union.

Known as Mother Lake toward the end of her life, she lived until 1923 and was popular on the lecture circuit as an advocate for temperance and women’s rights.

After marrying Lake, Leonora lived in St. Louis until 1916 when she moved to Minooka, Illinois, to live with her husband’s sister. A baseball fan, she visited Chicago to see baseball games. She died of cancer in 1923.

Former Montgomery County historian Jacqueline Murphy was instrumental in getting an historical marker honoring Barry placed at the east end of the Riverfront Center in downtown Amsterdam in 1998.

NOSTALGIA NEIGHBORHOOD

Mohawk Valley sports reporter John Thomas enjoyed the article on NFL quarterback  Russell Wilson’s Amsterdam ancestors. Thomas wrote, “In the twilight of his career we finally have him back home. Thanks for the memories.” 

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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