Singer Sewing Machine - a Survival Tool

An Obsession: For several months, I have had an obsession to see my Great-Grandmother's Singer Sewing Machine which was buried in the attic behind years of accumulated storage chests, tubs and footlockers. Frankly, I can barely stand to go up there AND twenty years ago, I fell down the long attic steps and seriously injured my back, so I have body trauma aversion to going up there. But I had to see that machine. I don't know why.

I know what prompted this compulsion orignally, however. With a seniors group I founded, we were holding a Family Heirlooms/Family History Day, and I wanted to bring that machine because it belonged to my Great Grandmother Catherine Sandman Young. Both my Great Grandmother and her daughter, my Grandmother Mabel Young Wright, supported their families in their long widowhoods by sewing. I know one job they had was sewing uniforms for the Schuylkill Aresenal, or so I was told.

We all feel like we are in hard times now, but my female ancestors really knew hard times - they lived through the Great Depression and both World Wars. My Great Grandmother lived into her 90's but the final years were lived after a massive stroke. My Grandmother Mabel took superior care of her mother, knitted booties and caps for her, sewed her satin, embroidered bed jackets and kept her immaculately clean under hand sewn quilts in the front bedroom of the apartment they rented on the second floor of 623 Asbury Avenue, Ocean City, NJ.

When I was a small child, I visited my Great Granmother in her bedroom and I remember rushing to her open window to watch the fire engines roaring out of the fire department directly across the street, 6th and Asbury Ave.

Great Granndmother couldn't speak or move except her eyes, but there was nothing horrible about it to my young observation, it was just how she was. And her daughter kept her so clean and decorated that she was to me, like a large doll.

My Grandmother Mabel left the Bentwood Sewing Machine that they both used to me when she died. I have carried it around with me for about 50 or more years. When I moved into my house atso number 623, it went into the attic and stayed there, quietly soaking up time until last week when I got my younger sister to venture up there and haul it down.

My sister is a good sport and it is a heavy machine. Once downstairs, I realized the key that had been tied to the handle by a pale blue ribbon turned gray by age, was missing. We both searched with flashlights in every potential corner but no luck. It has slipped into a crack in the universe where lost antique keys go to celebrate their retirement.

What to do. I had my machine but couldn't open it. First, I called a sewing machine repair man, Chuck McGowan, who has worked on my mother's sewing machine, which I have also inherited, for me twice when I was using it to create some art works which later won prizes for me! He said those Bentwood Singer keys are impossible to find but it I had the right screwdriver, I could insert that into the round hole and jiggle it around to unlock the box.

No screwdriver that I had was able to do the trick. My obsession was getting stronger. I called an antique store. I was about to call a locksmith, but I tried the internet instead. On YouTube, two European men (one Dutch and one British) and one American woman carefully explained to me how to use a screwdriver to open the box. One of the men suggested if I didn't have screwdriver that fit, I should cut a piece from a wire clothes hanger and take it to my anvil and hammer it flat. The other one suggested that I use the key from a sardine can. Being a vegetarian without an anvil, I was stumped so I went to my local family hardware store.

I have gone to that hardware store for 40 years! They have EVERYTHING! They have never let me down. I explained my situation and the young woman, a daughter of the family line that has run the store all these years, showed me a couple of screwdrivers she thought might do the trick.

It was a cold, rainy, ihospitable day ahd normally, I wouldn't have wanted to go outside. My obsession to open that box was so strong, I could't wait to get there and then get back home and try the two screwdrivers I bought for $11. I moved the box from the bookshelf to my bureau where there was better light and using the advice from the Englishman, I lifted the screwdriver gently inside the lock and turned it right and Voila! The box opened and revealed the sleeping princess.

The last hands that had caressed that shapely machine had been my two female ancestors, now both long gone, but lovingly remembered by me. Following additional information given by one of my YouTube tutors, I copied off the serial number from the base of the machine and discovered that my Bentwood Singer Sewing Machine model # AC678501 had been made in 1929 in Elizabethport, New Jersey. That information yielded a website with the egraved illustration of the enormous built-to-purpose sewing machine factory which at the time was the largest of its kind in the world. It had been built in 1872 and by 1982 it was closed.

When I went to high school, girls took a course called "Home Economics" in which we were taught to read a recipe and cook somthing; in my case it was a perfect cheese soufle' and to sew! I learned how to sew so well, that I made all my own clothes for many years. As I worked in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the grandmothers mentioned, there were many nice fabric stores nearby, and on the remnants table I could get 2 yards of a good quality fabric for under $5. Using a Simplicity Easy to Sew pattern for a simple shift dress, I made them sleeveless for summer in cotton, three quarter sleeved for autumn and spring in linen, and long sleeved in wool, corduroy and tweed for winter.

When my daughter was a toddler, I made a bunch of rompers the same way, short legs in light cotton for summer, long legs in corduroy for winter with a turtleneck top underneith. I could make her a romper for about $4 in less than an hour.

One of the reasons that sewing machine means so much to me is not only that I knew that Great Grandmother, or that she kept her family fed and housed by use of it, but because sewing was the way the vast majority of women made a living throughout the 1800's and a good part of the 1700's and 1900's and women in sewing factories all over the world still are supporting their families this way.

Also, I made a historically accurate costume for a volunteer job I had years ago, sewn by hand, skirt, bodice and shift. It took a long long long time. Seamstresses who made the elaborate dresses of the 1800's could work 15 hours a day and were known for having damaged eyesight from the work. The sewing machine saved them.

The first Singers were made in 1857. I plan to look into the history of them a bit more now that I have my hundred year old machine open. And I am seearching for a proper sewing table with wrought iron treadle. I have a call in to Old Mill Antiques in Mullica Hill and one day, I will try to persuade a friend or relative to go table hunting with me.

My mother's machine, which I have always used, was the best machine Singer every made, according to my repair man. I will try to find where I put the information he gave me about it. Maybe it is in the box I had to buy to keep it in. The original suitcase style one had disintegrated over time. Great Grandmother's Bentwood Box at one hundred, is perfect!

Happy trails, down whatever history trail you may be on! wrightj45@yahoo.com