Question: Trays of type fill the bench in the workroom of The Messenger in this photo taken by Mark Chapman in the autumn of 1951. The five young fellows are on a “behind the scenes tour” learning how the newspaper evolves from raw “copy” to the finished product found at the newsstand each week. Do you recognize any of the fellows, and do you have any idea why they are on tour?
Last week’s answer: The story of the Penn Spring Works was a previous History Mystery in 2014. If your memory is good, you will recall that the plant was located on Fobes Island opposite Lock Street. The Baldwin Canal ran along the eastern side of the island with a bridge crossing over from Lock. In the early days, it manufactured springs for carriages and wagons and, as the years went by, for automobiles, trucks and even railroad cars.
The photo from last week showed the Penn Spring Works band, which was organized in 1919 by Adam and Steve Golden. Fred Robinson, one of the owners of the spring works, purchased the instruments. When the Penn Spring Band broke up, the drum and other instruments were acquired by the high school music department.
Besides the band, the company also sponsored a ball team. And as many other businesses did, they regularly held a factory picnic, usually at one of the resorts on Onondaga Lake.
Contact Editor Sarah Hall at [email protected] or leave a message at 434-8889 ext. 310 with your guess by 5 p.m. Friday (please leave the information in the message; we are not generally able to return calls regarding History Mystery responses). If you are the first person to correctly identify an element in the photo, your name and guess will appear in next week’s Messenger, along with another History Mystery feature. History Mystery is a joint project of the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse and the Baldwinsville Public Library.
