I encourage your family stories be posted on this site! They are memories of Leominster! Here is one of mine, my GGrandfather who worked for the Geo. W. Wheelwright Paper Company: thetanseys.webs/irishjoe.htm Joe Tansey - Real Irishman The town of Leominster is in Massachusetts. It is not a young community for it has just finished celebrating its 175th anniversary. The Census gives its population at sixteen thousand. It produces more combs than any other town in the United States, is second only to Troy, New York in its collar output, makes better paper and cardboard of a certain class than any other city and is besides, the abiding lace of Joe Tansey -Real Irishman. Joe is Veteran Beater Engineer and General Enthusiasm for the Geo. W. Wheelwright Paper Company, Paper and Bristol Board Makers of the above town. He arrived in the U.S.A. from Roscommon County, Ireland, just half a century ago and evidently made a bee line for Leominster as there are no records of his having stopped on the way, and when the boss at the mill looked at Joe he at once gave proof of his good judgement and business acumen for he promptly set him to work at his first job which is likewise his last. In appearance Joe would have made a good understudy for Noah and in stature is only about twice as long as his beard, thus sharing with Napoleon and Dan Webster the distinction of being a Little Big Man. But nature usually makes up a deficiency in one department with prodigality in another, so Joe is gifted with industry, activity, loyalty and common sense. Now the Company Joe serves are master hands at paper making and at getting geniuses to help them do it but it must have been Providence dispensing Worth with Wisdom which furnished them with Joe. What the Creator thus joined together man has not yet put asunder, as Tansey and the Wheelwright Company have been doing business together for fifty years. When an individual has been employed continuously for half a century by one firm it speaks volumes for both parties and if you had met as I did at the same mill, five men whose years of service totaled over one hundred and fifty years you would sense with me the real secret of success in producing uniform and superior paper. I had the pleasure one morning of talking to Joe for five whole minutes which is as long a time as he ever spares anybody during working hours, and so I felt quite complemented. Even in that short time Joe told me a lot about paper and quite incidentally preached me a very real sermon in addition, and the incidental sermon, by the way, is the only sure-enough method of successful preaching. Joe believes in Jeffersonian Democracy, hard work, good cheer at all times and studiously avoids the business of reaching for the beam in other peoples eyes. His Ideas on the future life may or may not be altogether Orthodox but he knows a lot about the right way to live in this latitude and insists that the Golden Rule if rigidly adhered to, pays larger and more regular dividends than Standard Oil. He says the pursuance of this Rule is the reason why his Company has never had any labor troubles, and cited the fact that the Wheelwrights were the first paper makers in their line in Massachusetts to abolish the long hours characteristic of the industry and voluntarily to put their help onto three shifts of eight hours at the same pay as mills working two shifts of twelve hours. After the first few minutes spent in Joes company you begin to feel that the product he is responsible for is safe in his hands for all through his talk his blue and luminous little eyes are constantly shifting to the white and seething vat where the ingredients that go into the mnaking of B.P.F. and the many colors and weights of Dove Bristol are in Process. No product is ever more reliable than the men who make it and Joe Tansey is a sure factor in the reliability of Wheelwrights paper, so when he suddenly grabbed my hand, wished me a hearty Good Morning and disappeared by means of a near-by trap door leading to the lower regions, I knew that I had been listening to a great soul even though its outward manifestations consisted of blue eyes, a long grey beard and a hundred odd pounds of nervous, wiry activity, wrapped up in a gray flannel shirt and blue overalls. My friend Bill Shakespeare says that the apparel oft proclaims the man, but you see Bill never had the opportunity of meeting Joe Tansey. Of course a good many things happened before paper was even thought of; in fact, as you will remember, Moses inscribed on stone ten very important and well preserved rules to help guide human activities long before paper was invented, still paper, as we know it today is one of the most important products of this or any other country. Good printers and users of paper generally the country over know the virtue of the product of the Wheelwright Mills but most of them never heard of Joe Tansey and as fifty years of his virile activity (he has never yet been induced to take a vacation), are bound up with the product, I think it is fitting that Joes picture and a brief outline of his life should be put in evidence. It is true that his Companys trade-mark is well-known the country over wherever good.... Taken from a promotion leaflet for Wheelwright Paper Co many, many years ago....Jim Tansey, Jr. Joe Tansey was born in 1843, was from Boyle, Co. Roscommon, Ireland. His father was Thomas Tansey married to Mary Corcoran at the Roman Catholic Parish of Aghanagh, Co. Sligo, Ireland, on Dec 11th, 1834.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 14:06:01 +0000
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