Salem Female Employment Society
155 Essex Street (building no longer standing)

After failed attempts in 1857 to start an organization to give sewing to poor women, a group of four women met in 1861 at the home of Nancy D. Cole to explore how to create one that would be more successful. On January 16 of that year, the Salem Female Employment Society was founded. Its first board members, as their names appeared in the founding documents, were Nancy D. Cole, President; Mrs. John Bertram, Vice-President; Mrs. Robert S. Rantoul, Treasurer; Miss Esther C. Mack, Secretary (see S52); Miss Anna Johnson, Purchaser; Managers, Mrs. Sam’l Johnson, Mrs. J. Willard Peele, Mrs. William S. Cleveland, Mrs. Alfred Peabody, Mrs. James O. Safford, Miss Lydia H. Chase, Miss Martha G. Wheatland, Miss Harriet L. Whipple, Miss Harriet Hodges, and Miss Ellen D. Webb. The stated object of the Society was “to give sewing to poor women who were unable to procure employment elsewhere, and to give them a fair compensation for their work; hoping, by these means, to encourage a spirit of independence, and to diminish daily alms-giving.”⁸³ Goods were sold out of a store front at 366 Essex Street owned by Lydia Stone, who received a small percentage from sales. Applications poured in, and the society soon had to limit the number of its seamstresses to fifty. The reputation of the sewing and embroidery produced by women at the society even spread to Boston, and they were soon taking orders from far beyond the shop in Salem, including ones from field hospitals during the Civil War. In 1866, the Society opened two additional rooms for retail space at this site. A fire destroyed their first building later that year, but “through the kindness of friends, all the garments and materials, with some of the furniture was saved.”⁸⁴ The society then purchased rooms at 286 Essex Street, and the number of members and donations continued to grow. But with the advent of electric sewing machines, the demand for hand-sewn goods diminished quickly, and the society closed its doors in 1877. The funds they had left were distributed to other Salem charitable organizations, including the City Hospital (see S11), Children’s Friend Society (see S51), Relief Agency, Woman’s Friend Society (see S14), and to the remaining employees. All told, two hundred and seventy women were helped immeasurably by this agency. “When it was established it was a much needed charity,” Lucy Johnson wrote in her history of the society, “and for eighteen years it had faithfully done its work, and now passes into history, leaving the numerous other charitable societies in Salem to carry out the demands of the time.”⁸⁵

Notes
83. Lucy Johnson, Historical Sketch of the Salem Female Employment Society (Salem, Mass. 1880), 4.

84. Ibid., 6.

85. Ibid., 8.