Troy's
Collar Workers
By
Joan Howe
My
family’s census
records reveal that
often both single and
married men and women,
regardless of age, lived
at home with their parents.
Because three generations
sometimes lived under
the same roof, it was
important that the young
members contribute to
the family income. Many
of my female ancestors
helped supplement the
family income by working
in Troy’s bustling
collar industry.
By
the late 1860’s
Troy was the nation’s
foremost producer of
detachable collars as
a result of its invention
by a Troy resident in
1827. Hannah Lord Montague,
who lived at 139 Third
Street, became tired
of washing her husband’s
shirts multiple times
to get rid of the “ring
around the collar.” She
cut the collars off,
washed them separately,
and tied them back on
the shirts with string.
Hannah’s detachable
collar set a trend for
businessmen and working
women all across America.
Local entrepreneurs
began manufacturing
the collars, branching
out into many styles.
The detachable collar
and cuffs were worn
well into the 1930’s.
The
small operations that started
making Hannah’s
collars in Troy soon
grew into large industrial
operations as Troy became
the center of the collar-making
industry in the United
States. This industry
provided employment
for thousands of working
women, most of whom
were Irish. To its residents,
Troy was and still is
called, “ Collar
City.”
Collar
women labored for long hours
under trying conditions.
Collar sewers—banders,
runners, and turners—stitched
collars by hand or
machine, working at
home or in factories.
After the collars were
made, they next passed
into the hands of laundresses.
Laundresses—washers,
starchers, and ironers—prepared
newly manufactured collars
for sale to retailers.
They toiled in independently
owned laundries or in
the laundering departments
of large collar factories.
Laundresses’ working
conditions were especially
harsh. Washers worked
with boiling water,
while starchers had
to contend with caustic
starches and potentially
dangerous detergents,
and ironers handled
hot, heavy irons.
Workers
at a Linen Collar
Factory in Troy
By
the 1860’s about
3700 women worked in collar
factories and shops and
hundreds, perhaps thousands,
stitched collars in homes
in Troy and the surrounding
communities. The women
often left school at sixteen
to go to work. By the 1880s
collar factories employed
over 8,000 workers and thousands
of home workers.
My
grandmother, Margaret Reardon,
was a collar worker until
she married and began her
family. And her husband Edward
Duffy’s three
sisters, Margaret, Kate
and Mary, were listed as
collar shop workers in the
1900 census. It was fortunate
that an industry that employed
so many women was located
in close proximity to the
iron mills of Troy.
Cluett & Peabody
Collar Dampening
Division
1920's
Cluett,
Coon & Company's
Shirt, Collar
and Cuff Factories
Source
on collar workers was
Working
Women of Collar
City, Gender,
Class and Community
in Troy, 1864-86
by
Carole Turbin.
University of
Illinois
Press. 1992.