A Tribute to Brad Larson, Founder of Story Habitat

It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that Brad Larson, the founder of Story Habitat, passed away on November 2nd, 2023 at his home in Sharon, Massachusetts. The Heritage Winooski Mill Museum was lucky to work with Brad over the past year and a half. With funding we received from the Vermont Arts Council, Brad installed a customized Story Kiosk workstation in our gallery in September 2022, with the option for folks to record stories from their own phone or computer. After our workstation was installed in Winooski, Brad regularly reached out to me with ideas to help boost community participation in the Story Kiosk project. He really wanted to see our project flourish and genuinely got excited about every story we received. I am grateful for the time I got to know Brad and for his contribution in strengthening our community.

Brad Larson, bottom right, with fellow museum professionals at Industrial History New England meet-up, Springfield, MA, November 2022

Brad was a kind person, highly respected and very much loved in the museum field. Before starting his own company, Brad worked at the Boston Children’s Museum for a decade as a technology developer. He was a passionate advocate for storytelling, noting how stories could inspire empathy and understanding. Brad generously recorded his own Immigration Story for our kiosk, which I have shared below.

As a tribute to Brad, I invite you to use the link below to share your own immigration or mill story. I know Brad would be touched.

-Miriam Block
Executive Director, Heritage Winooski Mill Museum

Brad Larson shares his family Immigration Story for the Mill Museum’s Story Kiosk project.

Internship Reflection

by Shannon Kaiser

This summer I have been interning at the Heritage Winooski Mill Museum. I’m studying art history and history at UVM and will enter my senior year this fall. Admittedly, I did not know much about the Mill Museum or the history of Winooski before starting this internship. This position initially caught my eye because I am very interested in museum work and local history. In the description of the internship, I read that knowing how to knit or at least being willing to learn how to knit was a plus for potential applicants. I thought, well okay, that’s not really what I’m interested in, and I’ve never tried knitting or any kind of textile arts, but I’ll see how it goes.

Shannon (right) teaching museum visitors how to spool knit at French heritage Day.

      As it turns out, learning how to knit has been one of my favorite parts of this internship. I first learned how to knit using a spool (known as French knitting or spool knitting) for Winooski’s French Heritage Day event. For the French Heritage celebration, I spent the day with yarn and a crochet hook in hand, showing visitors of all ages how to use a spool to knit. The visitors who tried spool knitting ranged from young children trying it for the first time to seniors who were delighted to try it again after not having seen that style of knitting for years! I was touched by listening to adults describe how they had learned how to knit on a spool as children and had forgotten about this craft until now. The response to French knitting amazed me because, for older people, it reminded them of their childhood, and for children, it reminded them of making Rainbow Loom bracelets. Many visitors found the craft fascinating and expressed that they had never heard of it before, much less tried it. I replied, “I hadn’t either until just recently!”

spool knitting Instructions Shannon Developed

        Not only did I learn how to French knit, but I then learned how to knit the standard way with two needles with the assistance of the Stitch Together program. The Stitch Together program is a knitting group that meets at AALV (The Association of Africans Living in Vermont) in collaboration with the Winooski Mill Museum. This was another organization I had no knowledge of before starting my internship. Previously, I had only known knitting as a task that continually frustrated my grandmother. I recall her knitting a few rows, and then groaning as she would rip them out and asking why there wasn’t something more interesting to do. Perhaps my grandmother, who was from Lowell, Massachusetts, an area famously entrenched in the history of mechanized cloth production, had simply had enough of textiles by the time she reached old age. However, I imagine she would have really enjoyed the friendship and camaraderie that the Stitch Together program fosters.

Learning to knit has been so enjoyable for me because of the connections I have been able to gain with community members both during French Heritage Day and at AALV. And perhaps, to a small extent, this is a taste of the sense of togetherness and socialization that drew so many young women to leave their homes and work at the textile mills in Winooski and Burlington centuries ago.

Heritage Winooski Mill Museum Celebrates 25 Years

In 1997, St. Michael’s College faculty, Winooski Historical Society members, Winooski educators, and others began to explore and share the industrial and cultural histories of Winooski Falls, with a focus on the textile mills. Heritage Winooski quickly grew into a successful series of programs and a work-in-progress exhibit at the Champlain Mill. 

Andre Senecal, an early museum curator, designed the Heritage Winooski logo to show the Winooski skyline over time. From left to right, the skyline includes a St. Francis Xavier spire, the cement factory smokestack, the American Woolen Mill Building No. 4 (now the Champlain Mill), the old fire station tower (now next to the fire station on Main Street), and the St. Louis Convent tower (no longer in existence).

In 1998, the museum opened to the public in space on the lower level of the Champlain Mill provided by mill owner Ray Pecor. Exhibits and programs expanded as Winooski community members and mill worker families shared objects, photographs and stories. Programs were developed to support K-12 teachers, including Clickity Clack, Wool, Work and Waterpower, a curriculum guide prepared by Jeffrey Badillo, Teresa Hawes and Cathy Richards. In 2000, museum director Laura Krawitt edited The Mills at Winooski Falls: Winooski and Burlington, Vermont, a collection of essays and oral histories about Winooski mill workers and operations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Heritage Winooski was a project of St. Michael’s College until 2009. The Mill Museum, now organized as a non-profit organization and located on the main level of the Champlain Mill, continues to tell stories of Winooski’s industrial and cultural past, often weaving them into more contemporary histories and issues. Under the leadership of Miriam Block, who joined the museum as director in 2016, and with support from generous donors and community organizations, the museum collaborates with local groups around labor movements, activism, and social justice. 

2018 event Poster for concert of labor songs performed by Ric Palieri. The Museum sponsored the concert in support of Vermont Reads book Bread and Roses , Too by Katherine Patterson.

In recent years, we have refreshed permanent exhibits and installed temporary exhibits that draw many new visitors to the museum. The museum continues to involve community members in creating exhibits and presenting programs. For Mill To Mall: Historic Space Reimagined (2022), viewers contributed their memories of shopping and dining in the Champlain Mill. In 2023, we participated in the Welcome Blanket project, inspiring community members to knit, crochet and quilt blankets for New Americans that were displayed in the museum. Our innovative Story Kiosk is a permanent digital display that evolves as people add their stories at the museum or online through the Story Kiosk Virtual Portal. 

In celebration of our 25th Anniversary, a new display highlighting the history of the museum is now on view in our gallery. The community is invited to record their memories about the Mill Museum with our Story Kiosk at the museum or on-line. Stories about mill connections and immigration also welcome! Anyone who records a story by 8/31/23 will be entered for a chance to win a $25 gift card for Waterworks Restaurant!

Join us at the Mill Museum on Sunday September 3rd from 10am - 2pm for our 25th Anniversary Celebration! We'll showcase community stories and announce the gift card winner at the event.

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Article contributed by Margaret Tamulonis, HWMM Vice Chair and Prudence Doherty, HWMM Board Chair,

Stitch Together Program Begins!

Last night we began Stitch Together, a new chapter of our collaboration with AALV’s Women's Cafe support group. The Mill Museum organized a field trip to Must Love Yarn for the participants to pick out yarn for our next knitting project, which the women decided will be another group project! A huge thanks to Jennifer Arbuckle and Arianna Soloway at Must Love Yarn for hosting us!

The women’s group had previously knit and crocheted two blankets to be included in our Welcome Blanket project earlier this year. The women loved knitting together so much, they asked for the Mill Museum’s support to continue! For this next project, the women will be knitting sample strips to try different knit techniques. The strips will be stitched together to make more community blankets.

Stitch Together will meet twice a month at AALV to offer Refugee women from East Africa an outlet to learn new knitting skills, socialize, make new community connections, and heal from past trauma.

Stitch Together is made possible with support from the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, Northfield Savings, Vermont Federal Credit Union, and individual donors.

If you would like to support Stitch Together, financial contributions welcome!

95th Anniversary of the Flood of 1927

Today marks the 95th anniversary of the Flood of 1927.

The flood started on November 2nd and lasted till the late hours of November 4th with an estimated 84 deaths with 55 in the Winooski Basin alone. This catastrophe cost the state around 35 million dollars to fix infrastructure, housing and and displacement.

The American Woolen Company’s plant suffered a damage of 1 million dollars. The water washed straight through the first floor of the plant. Efforts were made in vain to save the bridge between Burlington and Winooski. To replace the bridge between Burlington and Winooski, the government erected a pontoon bridge, and eventually rebuilt the bridge which we still use today.

Watch clips of the flood in Winooski in this vintage film.
Can you pick out the Woolen Mill, the Champlain Mill, and the old Grist Mill?

Grant awarded to Mill Museum to support Local Refugee Group participating in Welcome Blanket Initiative

Workshop participant at AALV, sharing her crochet skills.

The Heritage Winooski Mill Museum recently received $3,000 from the Vermont Community Foundation’s Spark! Connecting Community Grant to support a series of textile workshops for local Refugee women so they can partake as makers in Welcome Blanket, a grassroots project that’s core purpose is to welcome refugees to America.

Welcome Blanket is a nation-wide project that invites the public to actively welcome New Americans through craftivism. Participants are invited to create handmade blankets that are displayed at a local museum to amplify the message, and then gifted to New Americans as a symbol of welcome.

Grant funds will support the Women’s Café empowerment program at AALV, a Refugee Resettlement organization in Burlington. Participants in the weekly Women’s Café are War Survivors from Congo, who are trying to move beyond trauma, to heal and find their voice, as they face life transitions of living as African immigrants in a safer environment.

The Mill Museum staff have already met with a group of twenty women from the Women’s Café several times to discuss the project. The women have expressed sincere interest in participating in Welcome Blanket and are excited about the workshops. AALV Case Manager Irene Webster, who prefers to be called KeruBo, runs the Women’s Café. KeruBo says the workshops “will be a wonderful, communal, unifying and healing activity.“ Museum Director Miram Block adds “the workshops will give the women the opportunity to learn new skills, and give them a meaningful way to connect to the greater community”.

Some crochet examples from workshop participant.

The workshops will begin in late Sept. and run through Nov. and will focus on teaching skills in knitting, crochet, and felting. Some participants already have excellent crochet skills and will be encouraged to help each other so they can work on the project outside of the workshops. The tools and materials such as crochet hooks and yarn will be supplied. Participants will be able to keep the tools and extra materials to continue crafting beyond the project.

Two seasoned crafters will lead the workshops: Elin Melchior, who is the Study Abroad Coordinator at Champlain College, will teach the knitting and felting sessions. Crochet sessions will be taught by Emily Gauthier, who works and teaches classes at Must Love Yarn in Shelburne. A Swahili translator will be present at each workshop. The Women’s Café group will also be invited to visit the museum, where they can see their completed work displayed in the Welcome Blanket exhibition and have an opportunity to share their immigration stories. 

The Welcome Blanket exhibition will open at the Mill Museum in Dec. 2022. Everyone is invited to participate. People are encouraged to start making blankets and submit them to the museum by Nov. 23rd. Contributors are also invited to write personal messages about their own family immigration story and words of welcome. The blankets and messages will be on display at the museum through Feb. 2023 before distributing them to the local Refugee population. The museum will partner with AALV to distribute the blankets.

Crochet examples from workshop participant.

In addition to the grant funding, the textile workshops are supported by material donations from the following local Community Partners: YarnVT, A Quilter’s Garden, Grand Isle Art Works, Green Mountain Yarn & Fiber, Hermit Thrush Fiber Co, Karen Freeman/SeamWorks.

Update (9/27/22) We are pleased to announce additional grant funding of $1,500 from Vermont Mutual Insurance Giving Fund to support the Women’s Café Textile Workshops! We are truly grateful!

Meet our new summer intern!

Say hello to our summer intern, Joshua!
Joshua is a rising Senior at Winooski High School. Joshua and his family moved to Winooski from Zambia in 2020. He is using his time at the Mill Museum to learn about local history and various ways that a small museum can support and enrich the local community. Today, he learned about waterpower while helping out with a riverfront walking tour. In the next few weeks, we'll take field trips to the Fleming Museum, Middlebury Museum of Art, and the Henry Sheldon Museum to compare different types of museums. Joshua will use his summer experiential learning internship as research for his senior capstone project.

Behind the Scenes: The Making of Mill To Mall

All the research and interviews for our latest exhibit, Mill to Mall: Historic Space Reimagined were conducted by local historian Erica Donnis. Now its Erica’s turn to be interviewed!

Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a local historian and a native of Essex, Vermont. I’ve had the pleasure of working for the Mill Museum since October on a part-time basis. I also manage the Special Collections program at Champlain College.

What drew you to this exhibition project?
I am passionate about local history and the history of everyday life. Mill to Mall was a wonderful opportunity to combine both of these aspects of my work. I also had a personal connection to the topic, having shopped at the Champlain Mill during its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. I blew a lot of my allowance on stickers and fancy colored  pens at the Paper Peddler as a tween and bought my high school prom dress at Clay’s.

How did you research Mill to Mall?
Over the course of several months, I did a deep dive into the recent history of the Champlain Mill and its importance to our local community. My work included conducting in depth interviews with almost thirty people, including former Winooski city officials, entrepreneurs who owned businesses in the mall, and some of their employees. I spent hours on newspapers.com reviewing articles and advertisements in The Burlington Free Press to understand contemporary perceptions of the project and verify details of specific businesses. Although the lead architect, James Lamphere, has since passed away, I was able to obtain a full set of architectural plans from his Colchester firm, Wiemann Lamphere. I sifted through correspondence and reports filed at the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation to understand the architectural significance of the building as well as how the mall project was a pioneer for the newly enacted federal historic preservation tax credit program. The City of Winooski’s files also turned out to be a goldmine; they have a trove of images by local photographer Sandy Milens documenting the Mill’s refurbishment and grand opening, which feature prominently in the exhibition.

What was the most meaningful aspect of the project?
I was amazed and touched by all the personal memories and stories we received from the local community. Dozens of people replied to a Facebook post, and others sat for interviews at the Winooski Senior Center. Their stories provide a wonderful window into the everyday life and experiences of the Champlain Mill’s shoppers, diners, business owners, and their employees – one that collapses the distance of the last forty years in ways that continue to resonate.
For example, one contributor wrote about working a part time job at the Have a Heart gift shop when she was a student at Saint Michael’s College. She befriended a University of Vermont student who worked at Chessy’s Frozen Custard, and they enjoyed Diet Coke and Funyuns together on their breaks. I love hearing about the seemingly minor details of everyday life like people’s favorite junk food in the 1980s!

What are you working on next for the Mill Museum?
I am contributing to the research of the Museum’s new permanent exhibition on child labor, which is in the planning stages. I’ve been studying census records to understand the demographics of the local area circa 1910, when photographer Lewis Hine took his famous photographs of children working in the mills and elsewhere in the Burlington area.

Thank you Erica!

Interview with Monica Farrington

by Paige Burton

Martha’s burling tweezers

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with Monica Farrington about her family connections with the Winooski mills. Monica was born and raised in the Winooski-Burlington area by her mother Martha Simon (nee Allen), who spent around 25 years working in the American Woolen Mill in Winooski. Martha was a burler. She scanned through fabric for knots and imperfections and pulled them out with tweezers. Monica still has a few pairs of her mother’s burling tweezers and shared photos of them with me.

Monica originally became interested in her family’s mill history while working nights as a camera operator at Channel 3 and meeting people who were researching labor history. She started looking into articles about labor in the area, leading to finding a newspaper article including a photo of her mother alongside a group of burlers in the Burlington Free Press. The photo features Martha and several other women working in the mills, and was part of several stories printed in the newspaper about the mills at the time. Her mother, some of her aunts and her friends’ parents were all working in the mills at some point.

Above: Martha (second from left) and several other burlers featured in the Burlington Free Press, August 17, 1943

Monica tells me her mother was born in Barre on January 5th, 1915, to parents who had emigrated from Lebanon in the late 1890s. She described her mother as “straddling” between Lebanon and Vermont, and only remembers her speaking English. Monica learned Lebanese from her grandmother, who would babysit her while Martha was at the mills.

Portrait of Martha, age 22

The Allens moved between Barre, Montpelier, and Burlington, eventually opening up a store on Howard St. Monica recalls that when Martha was 15, “My grandfather got her a summer job, … they put her in the mill working. She was supposed to leave that fall and go back to school. She would’ve been a junior, and my grandfather wouldn’t let her leave, he was making her work and give him the paycheck.” She had been a good student, and a priest from her school had even come to the house to try and convince Martha’s father to let her quit her mill job, to no avail. She worked in the mills for around 25 years.

Monica remembers her mother “would take the bus to Winooski” every day at around 7 am, and she worked until around 4 pm, making between five and seven dollars a week.  In the summer the mills would get extremely hot, and Monica recalls her mother telling her that the workers would be given salt pills as they walked in to fight dehydration, saying it would help them “weather the heat.”  

Although working at the mill was hard, and the machines were so loud that they couldn’t talk, Monica thinks her mother liked her work. Especially during the war, she told me that “spirits were high. I mean, they took pride in this work, and then during the war they all thought that they were contributing,” by making the wool that became uniforms and blankets for soldiers, who they would call “the boys.”

After 25 years, Martha left the mills and began work at a sewing factory in downtown Burlington on College Street. After the sewing factory she became a tailor at Sears, something she loved to do. Although Martha passed away in 1980, her memory lives on through Monica and the passion she has for this history.

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Monica holding family recipe.

Monica shared her mother’s traditional Lebanese recipe for a dish called Kibbeh. Find the recipe in our blog article “ Lebanese Kibbeh Recipe”.

The Mill Museum would like to thank Monica for sharing her family story. Do you have a mill story to share? We’d love to hear it! Call us or send us a note at: #802-355-9937 or email info@themillmuseum.org

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Paige Burton was our museum intern for the spring of 2021. In May, she graduated from UVM with a degree in History and Environmental Studies. Recently she moved to North Conway, NH and is working as the manager of the Summit Museum at the Mount Washington Observatory.

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Lebanese Kibbeh Recipe

After interviewing Monica Farrington about her mother Martha Simon, Monica sent me a few photos, including one of her holding her family’s old kibbeh recipe. I decided to try it out for myself. Kibbeh is a traditional Mediterranean dish made with spices, beef or lamb, bulgur wheat, and pine nuts. It’s served as either balls or layered in a dish, which I chose to do. I also swapped out the meat for vegetarian ground beef substitute, and removed the pine nuts altogether.

To make the dish, I used Monica’s list of ingredients and did some research online about how to prepare it. I referenced the New York Times recipe - it makes the whole process super simple and I was able to add more spices to it without any trouble, and it had information about bake time and temperature that Monica’s recipe did not have.

I started by soaking bulgur wheat for around ten minutes then draining it, and mixing that in with the veggie ground beef. Then I added salt, pepper, cumin, mint, and allspice. I just eyed the spices and put in about an equal amount of all of them. Monica told me her recipe didn’t have specific amounts and it was more intuitive. This beef, spice, and bulgur mixture makes up the top and bottom layers of the dish. For the middle layer, I browned an onion and green pepper in a pan, and added about a third of the beef to cook for a few minutes. After that, I got an oiled baking dish and added a bottom layer of the beef, then the middle with the pepper and onion added in, then another layer of the original mixture. I’d definitely recommend saving more than you think you would need for the top layer. I ended up not having enough to form a solid top layer and it ended up uneven. The kibbeh cooks for between 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees. I really enjoyed it, and my roommate and I ended up finishing it in one dinner.

             Ingredient List:

•    1 cup bulgur wheat

•    1 lb ground beef or beef substitute

•    1 small onion

•    1 green pepper

•    Olive oil

•    Cumin

•    Mint

•    Allspice

•    Salt

•    Pepper

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Paige Burton was our museum intern for the spring of 2021. In May, she graduated from UVM with a degree in History and Environmental Studies. Recently she moved to North Conway, NH and is working as the manager of the Summit Museum at the Mount Washington Observatory.