In Plymouth, it’s really a birthday party and a big one! The Plymouth Cordage Museum invites folks to join the Plymouth Cordage Company’s Bicentennial Celebration to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Cordage Company.
Once the town’s biggest employer, and for over one hundred forty years, supplier to the world of rope and twine, the Company wasn’t simply a business to Bourne Spooner, who founded the company in 1824, just down the road in North Plymouth.
Bobbi Clark has more on the story:
Mr. Spooner believed a happy worker was a better worker and to that end he established a community around the factory—and that included housing. Lucile Leary is Director of the Plymouth Cordage Museum:
“They had a hundred and twenty-five buildings and they had three hundred fifty-one units for their employees.”
Both education and health care were a part of the Cordage Company plan,
“They had a free all-day kindergarten, boys and girls. They had free health care, but they also had a hospital bed, taken care of, paid for, through the Cordage, so if you had to go to the hospital you didn’t pay a hospital fee.”
And Leary says, the Cordage Company looked to improve the lives of their employees..
“They took care of their employees…they tried to improve their lives so that they could better themselves.”
And for a better understanding of the Cordage Company story, “A Ropewalk Through Time” will take place on Saturday, September 21st, from 11 AM to 3 PM at the Cordage Museum, 10 Cordage Park Circle, featuring the Reenactors of the Historical Ambassadors of New England.
In Plymouth, Bobbi Clark, WATD News.
**Bobbi Clark is a member of the Plymouth Cordage Historical Society.**
