LYNN — The Lynn Cultural Council awarded the Lynn-raised Wakefield bootmaker Sarah Madeleine Guerin a $1,000 grant to share the stories of a dying breed — those who worked in Lynn’s once-thriving shoe industry.
In 1899, The Daily Evening Item published a call for stories from those who remembered making shoes by hand. 124 years later, we’re publishing another call for stories— this time, for those who can recall working in Lynn’s shoe factories.
Colonial Lynn was once scattered with “10-footer,” artisan shoe shops, where shoemakers, confined to small shacks, slowly churned out handmade leather shoes. In the late 19th Century, Jan Matzeliger invented the shoe lasting machine — bringing on industrialized footwear manufacturing that turned Lynn into the shoe capital of the world.
By the mid-20th Century, shoe manufacturing in Lynn dwindled significantly, until the last Lynn shoe factory burned down in the Second Great Lynn Fire of 1981.
Guerin makes Western boots by hand in a replica 10-footer behind her Wakefield Bootmaking shop, Shaboteuse. Having grown up in Lynn, Guerin was fascinated by the city’s shoemaking history and researched it thoroughly.
Speaking at Lynn Museum events, Guerin said that some elderly audience members shared stories of working in shoe factories in the 20th Century.
“I researched Lynn’s shoe making history because I think it’s a very important story that’s not being told. Often in a group of people that just come to listen to me talk, there’ll be an elder, or a few different elderly people who worked in different shoe factories around Lynn,” Guerin said.
Guerin decided she wanted to record and compile the last first-hand accounts of Lynn’s shoemaking era, in a compilation of former factory workers’ photos and stories.
She said that The Item’s 1899 call for shoemaker stories served as her inspiration for the project’s format, and her decision to collaborate with The Daily Item to find Lynn’s former shoemakers.
“These are important stories and they should be gathered before these elderly people are no longer with us,” Guerin said. “I was trying to figure out the best way to do it, and I thought it was really appropriate to involve The Item because of this series of stories they did in 1899, where they were basically in the same position we’re in today, but for at that time, it was about people who made shoes by hand.”
Guerin said that while she’s not entirely sure what she will do with her final shoemaker conglomerate piece, she might consider pitching it to a museum.
“I grew up here, and I didn’t know as a kid that this was a shoe hub — it ended so abruptly and these people that live here that worked in factories 30 or 40 years ago are the last opportunity for us to get those firsthand accounts of what it was like,” she said.
Those who previously worked in Lynn shoe factories are encouraged to contact Lynn News Reporter Anthony Cammalleri at [email protected] with their names, a photo, and a brief description of his or her time as a shoemaker.
