The Laundry List

Westerly Laundry Slip Logo, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Thanks to Dorothy Hanna, of Mystic and the folks at the Mystic River Historical Society

The Laundry List

One of the fun things about researching my family business is the "stuff' that is available on eBay and from sites that sell ephemera. However, I didn't expect that any historical societies would have such items that were probably donated in their collections.

This is the top part of the paper that was attached to someone's cleaned laundry. Don't you love the use of the words?

I am going to take a few days off from working on my stories to sort through all the Rhode Island City Directory listings I have gathered to make dates for my timeline. They are all jumbled in my notebook and I need to get them organized in the right year.

You know that the first one for the Westerly Steam Laundry was 1892. I have to find the end of the ones that say Laundry and the beginning ones that say Victor or have dry cleaning in the description.

It could take me a few days to be sure I have copied them all down correctly.

I do know that I can stop with 1908 in Westerly because that's what the Victory Story pamplet indicates. But, we've been wrong with assumptions before!

That's project based research for you....