Rubber Relations

[By Fred Lynch in Providence, Rhode Island]

Continuing on my series of sketches of my immigrant ancestor’s places.

In 1910, the O’Connors came to Providence, Rhode Island, from Chelsea, Massachusetts, and found an apartment here, in the Valley neighborhood. Daniel, my great-grandfather, was taking a mill job with the big US Rubber Company. He had previously worked at a rubber mill in Chelsea with his brothers Frank and Bernie. The O’Connors were immigrants from the city of Cork, as was Daniel’s wife, Kate (Holland). Chelsea and Providence were heavily industrialized in those days, and immigrants did much of the dirty work. Three children of the family also worked at some point in the rubber mills. During WW2, US Rubber employed 3500 workers in a complex of 29 buildings over 23 acres by the narrow Woonasqatucket River. In 1915, two thirds of the population of Providence was foreign-born or children of the foreign-born. The O’Connors contributed quite a bit to that count: two immigrants with ten children.