Westerly Sun Column | Labor Day Has Long History in Westerly

Labor Day was yesterday, and as the local history librarian I thought of the photos we have in our collection (and available online for easy viewing!) of the first Labor Day parade held in our lovely town, which took place in 1895.

Labor Day celebrations began occurring in various cities in the late 1800s – the very first was in New York City in 1882, and included 10,000-20,000 marchers in a parade through Manhattan. In 1894 Congress passed an act declaring the first Monday in September a national legal holiday.

A search of the Westerly Sun online shows that in the summer of 1895, the town of Westerly formed a Labor Day Parade Committee, with numerous subcommittees. Several ads then appeared in the local paper encouraging, for example, all Westerly barbers to attend a meeting above the post office to discuss their participation in the first Westerly Labor Day parade, or for granite workers to gather at the Granite Cutters Hall (located on High Street) to help plan their parade float. Ads also were run for merchants selling large and small flags and bunting to help people decorate the town. All in all, there were about 50 floats and 1000 people marching in the parade, with 10,000 viewing it along the parade route!

The route began in Dixon Square and went down High Street, past the train station, around what later became Wilcox Park, then across the bridge into Pawcatuck. It wound down Mechanic Street, up Palmer, down Moss Street, back down West Broad Street into Westerly, then to the end of Main Street, up to Elm, down Broad Street, and eventually ended at Riverside Park. Riverside Park was a new park built on Canal Street, approximately where the Grey Sail Brewery is today.

Immediately after the parade ended, there were two bicycle races, a football game, and a baseball game. Once the games were over, a dancing platform was set up for dancing until late in the evening. Sounds like a wonderful first annual observation!

Directions on how to look at historic local photos from our collection, or read the digitized Westerly Sun, which spans the years 1858-1958, are as follows: one way is to visit www.westerlylibrary.org, then click on “Library” and select “Local History & Special Collections”. At the top of the page there will be links to the photo collection online and also our scanned Westerly High School yearbooks. All of those images are free to download so please help yourself. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, there is a link to the digitized Westerly Sun. You can also bookmark website address and go directly there without having to visit the library website each time: westerly.historyarchives.online. Typing that in takes you right to the old newspapers.

By Nina Wright, Special Collections and Reference Librarian