Equality Day is Saturday, and to mark the occasion, Gloversville’s Glove Theatre is holding a presentation to honor women who worked in the leather industry in Fulton County.
The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Hometown Association is partnering with the historic venue on a combined film and theatre presentation to highlight the stories of generations of women who worked in regional glove factories. Organizers say many of the stories have been ignored.
The presentation includes a documentary with a shadow cast a la “Rocky Horror” and explanations by members of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Hometown Association. It came out of a StoryCorps project.
Chair Nancy Baird Brown says glovework offered empowerment for many women.
“They remember fondly that they were good times, but they were working so hard. In some of the stories, they were the breadwinner in their family, a number of the early stories, the women, they were raising the children and earning the money and doing everything,” Brown said.
Fulton County Historian Samantha Hall-Saladino says the area was well-suited to the industry.
“You need skins, you need water, and you need hemlock bark, which was used in the early tanning process, and Fulton County had all three of those in abundance," Hill-Saladino said.
At the height of the industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s, 90 percent of the world's gloves were made in Fulton County.
Hall-Saladino says the industry grew out of colonial trade, with many early tinsmiths in the area receiving deer pelts in exchange for wares.
“They weren't quite sure what to do with them. They did learn tanning methods from the local indigenous people in the area, but they eventually hired an Englishman named Talmage Edwards to come and teach them how to dress leather,” Hall-Saladino said.
Saladino says there was a wide variety of work available in the glove industry.
“The most, I guess, dirtiest jobs would be working on the tannery floor, dealing with the skins when they first come in, getting them ready for the process of becoming fine leather. You could also be a glove cutter, which was the highest paid position in the glove industry,” Saladino said.
Glove factories would also drop off pieces for women to sew at home, and then pick up the finished pieces. Much of the work was seasonal. Saladino says the industry’s decline was accelerated by a ban on home work in the 1940s.
Taking part in the presentation will be Sarah Eckler of Townsend Leather, one of the last remaining leather companies in Fulton County, who says there’s a link between Townsend and past enterprises.
“My grandfather used to work in finishing for other companies,” Eckler said.
But Dr. Anya Biel, a history professor at Fulton-Montgomery Community College and ECSHA trustee, says women’s stories were largely left out of the record.
“It was mostly men on the frontlines. Men who owned companies, who procured leather, who owned glove shops, who did the cutting of leather, which was a delicate, and I guess, intricate and expensive job. But it was the women who sewed gloves,” Biel said.
Biel says the work enabled women to provide for their families, even if the money was mainly controlled by their husbands.
“It also allowed the next generation, their children, to have better lives. They were able to go to college, they were able to get an education,” Biel said.
Many sewers in the region were immigrants from Eastern Europe.
Biel says uncovering the history was a challenge.
“Those women are no longer with us. So we tried to reach their children, daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters.”
Sandy Fiesinger, who also works for the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Hometown Association, had ancestors who worked in Fulton County’s glove factories. She was interviewed for the documentary and recalled her grandmother fondly.
“I remember she had special, these big clunky high heels that she used to wear and she walked and I could hear her you know, walk down the driveway and then when I was little because my bedroom was on that side and I could hear her you know, walk until she was out of hearing distance and she would then do her thing with Swear’s Gloves, and then she would walk home,” Fiesinger said.
Fiesinger’s grandmother was a seamstress and Slovakian immigrant who went to work at 51 after her husband died in 1949.
“She would take the gloves, and she would sew the fingers kind of together so they would close, so she was called the hand closer,” Fiesinger said.
Fiesinger’s mother also worked part-time in a glove factory.
“My mother would go after school with girlfriends, and they would do their mothers’ hand closing too. And then my mother would leave- she would get paid, but then when she finished, she would go and do my grandmother's,” Fiesinger said.
Fiesinger says many of the women didn’t speak English at work.
"When they were hand closing, they would talk and, and most likely, a lot of the Slovak ladies would be talking in their own language, and some of the other ladies in another language,” Fiesinger said.
Fiseinger says her father also worked on gloves.
“My dad used to help his neighbor, actually, she, she did some of that too. And my dad and his brother and maybe not his brother, he was little but his sister, they would help out this woman. And then on Sunday, she would make them a big Italian dinner,” Fiesinger said.
Gloves are sized using hand forms, Fiesinger says.
“These are actual pad- like, hands that you trace to make the gloves and the different sizes because gloves are sized by your hands. So some people would might wear 7, 7.25-7.5 hat, well they also sized your hands,” Fiesinger said.
Mike Maricondi is General Manager of the Glove Theatre.
“Hoping they take away a renewed sense of pride in their community, a sense of wonderment at the resiliency and the work ethic of these women, and that they be inspired to pick up the torch, however they see fit,” Maricondi said.
Maricondi says for right now, this is the only planned performance.
“If it becomes a hit, or if during the talkback, you know, we get some more feedback from the audience about ways to expand it or if there is interest within the community, it will be really cool to tour it,” Maricondi said.
More information can be found here.
