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Life in The Mill
Amsterdam’s mill girl’s long and Productive Life
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette
Amsterdam’s mill girl died August 24. 2018, at Albany Medical Center. Sophie “Sue” Fraczek was 94. According to her grandnephew, Dominick Fraczek, she died at Albany Medical Center but had been living in a second-floor apartment on Amsterdam’s Guy Park Avenue.
Her parents, Dominick F. and Mary Kosiba Fraczek, were Polish immigrants. Her father worked at Mohawk Carpet mills in Amsterdam. Her mother, who died young, sometimes worked at Bigelow Sanford, the rug mill that bordered the Fraczek’s Park Hill neighborhood.
Aunt Sue, as she was known to her nieces and nephews, attended Amsterdam High and took a power machine course at Vrooman Avenue School in 1940. She worked at Novak’s shirt factory on Edson Street and the Amsterdam Coat Company in the West End.
Bigelow Sanford hired her to operate a twisting machine toward the end of World War II. The mills hired many women then to take the places of men who were in the military. She worked in Building 54.
“When I went to work (at Bigelow, I was scared to death,” she said in an interview. “It was my first time in a carpet mill. It was hot. It was noisy.”
The machine she used took two or three strands of wool and twisted the strands into yarn that was used to weave carpets. The yarn left the twisting room on spools or bobbins which fed the yarn into the looms.
Her pay was based on piece work, in her case determined by the weight of the bobbins of yarn she produced. She recalled making $45 for 40 hours work, a lot less she said than carpet weavers made.
Her picture was taken in front of her machine, a photo that ended up at the Walter Elwood Museum in Amsterdam. Television producer Steve Dunn picked that image to symbolize the 2000 WMHT-TV documentary he and I produced, “Historic Views of the Carpet City: Amsterdam, N.Y.”
Dunn said, “It is a really good picture, technically good. The black and white content expressed the whole theme—industrial workers in a mill town. I loved the way the spindles receded in the picture, and I loved the bandanna and the period clothes the woman wore.”
The photo was used in the documentary and illustrated newspaper articles about the film. It was displayed on the cover of WMHT’s viewer magazine.
Aunt Sue did not know the photo existed until she saw it on television. According to a grandnephew she would tell people, “I’m the mill girl!” The photo is one of two pictures of her in the collection of the Elwood Museum.
Dunn and I did not know the identity of the mill girl until several months after the documentary appeared. School teacher Gerry Brown stopped to talk with me at the Amsterdam Price Chopper and identified the mill girl as her godmother and aunt. Aunt Sue was the topic of my first column for the Daily Gazette in November 2000.
She stayed at Bigelow Sanford until the company left Amsterdam in 1955. She then did a similar job for Mohawk/Mohasco Carpet for six years.
Later she worked at several textile mills, retiring in 1989 from Stratojac a company that moved to Amsterdam in the 1980s to make coats.
She was not the only Amsterdam mill veteran who could say, “Almost every job I lost was because the company moved out.”
Sophie “Sue” Fraczek never married but spent years helping raise children in her extended family. She had a great eye for selecting gifts for nieces and nephews. She liked listening to the radio and loved to read, especially the classics.
Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.
518 346 6657
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By Bob CudmoreAmsterdam’s mill girl’s long and Productive Life
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette
Amsterdam’s mill girl died August 24. 2018, at Albany Medical Center. Sophie “Sue” Fraczek was 94. According to her grandnephew, Dominick Fraczek, she died at Albany Medical Center but had been living in a second-floor apartment on Amsterdam’s Guy Park Avenue.
Her parents, Dominick F. and Mary Kosiba Fraczek, were Polish immigrants. Her father worked at Mohawk Carpet mills in Amsterdam. Her mother, who died young, sometimes worked at Bigelow Sanford, the rug mill that bordered the Fraczek’s Park Hill neighborhood.
Aunt Sue, as she was known to her nieces and nephews, attended Amsterdam High and took a power machine course at Vrooman Avenue School in 1940. She worked at Novak’s shirt factory on Edson Street and the Amsterdam Coat Company in the West End.
Bigelow Sanford hired her to operate a twisting machine toward the end of World War II. The mills hired many women then to take the places of men who were in the military. She worked in Building 54.
“When I went to work (at Bigelow, I was scared to death,” she said in an interview. “It was my first time in a carpet mill. It was hot. It was noisy.”
The machine she used took two or three strands of wool and twisted the strands into yarn that was used to weave carpets. The yarn left the twisting room on spools or bobbins which fed the yarn into the looms.
Her pay was based on piece work, in her case determined by the weight of the bobbins of yarn she produced. She recalled making $45 for 40 hours work, a lot less she said than carpet weavers made.
Her picture was taken in front of her machine, a photo that ended up at the Walter Elwood Museum in Amsterdam. Television producer Steve Dunn picked that image to symbolize the 2000 WMHT-TV documentary he and I produced, “Historic Views of the Carpet City: Amsterdam, N.Y.”
Dunn said, “It is a really good picture, technically good. The black and white content expressed the whole theme—industrial workers in a mill town. I loved the way the spindles receded in the picture, and I loved the bandanna and the period clothes the woman wore.”
The photo was used in the documentary and illustrated newspaper articles about the film. It was displayed on the cover of WMHT’s viewer magazine.
Aunt Sue did not know the photo existed until she saw it on television. According to a grandnephew she would tell people, “I’m the mill girl!” The photo is one of two pictures of her in the collection of the Elwood Museum.
Dunn and I did not know the identity of the mill girl until several months after the documentary appeared. School teacher Gerry Brown stopped to talk with me at the Amsterdam Price Chopper and identified the mill girl as her godmother and aunt. Aunt Sue was the topic of my first column for the Daily Gazette in November 2000.
She stayed at Bigelow Sanford until the company left Amsterdam in 1955. She then did a similar job for Mohawk/Mohasco Carpet for six years.
Later she worked at several textile mills, retiring in 1989 from Stratojac a company that moved to Amsterdam in the 1980s to make coats.
She was not the only Amsterdam mill veteran who could say, “Almost every job I lost was because the company moved out.”
Sophie “Sue” Fraczek never married but spent years helping raise children in her extended family. She had a great eye for selecting gifts for nieces and nephews. She liked listening to the radio and loved to read, especially the classics.
Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.
518 346 6657