Worcester's valentine legacy at the heart of the matter

This story first published in 2013.

A bright red heart sits at the very center of the city seal, adopted when Worcester was incorporated as a city in 1848 and assumed its official position as the Heart of the Commonwealth. That same red heart, set against a green background, graces many of our contemporary street signs.

But, although Worcester was a center for valentine production for close to a century, the position it long ago staked out in Massachusetts has nothing whatsoever to do with valentines.

"The earliest reference I've seen to 'the Heart of the Commonwealth' is 1822," says William D. Wallace, long-time director of the Worcester Historical Museum.

By contrast, the first valentines did not appear here until 1847, when Esther Howland took orders for the few samples she had made with paper lace, colored paper and trimmings from her father's stationery store. Though she could not have imagined it, the company that she soon created, along with other valentine makers in Worcester, would help to touch off the industry's role as a prominent local employer for decades.

The heart connection may be nothing more than coincidence, yet the valentine story closely parallels the city's development as it grew to embrace its nickname.

Howland's tale, in particular, reflects themes critical to 19th-century America, especially the rise of entrepreneurship and a shift from cottage industry to factory.

Legend holds that the first valentine was a message sent by an imprisoned Roman priest named Valentinus to his jailer's daughter, perhaps his love, on February 14, 297, as he went to his execution. Professions of love on February 14 were common in Europe in the 1600s, and handmade, hand-delivered valentines appeared in the United States by the turn of the 18th century.

By the mid-19th century, machine printing and die cutting made it possible to use printed verses and pictures as well as to buy paper lace and trimmings cheaply, though they were still made only in Europe.

Esther Howland, born in 1828 in Worcester, was the eldest surviving child and only daughter of Southland Howland and Ester Allen. Her father was a successful stationer, and she grew up in relative affluence at 16 Summer St. Southland Howland believed in education for his daughter as well as for his sons, and Esther graduated from the 10-year-old Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley in 1847. (She was there at the same time as Emily Dickinson, who spent a year at Mount Holyoke.)

It is said that Esther's interest in valentines was sparked when she received an English valentine that year. Intrigued, she asked her father to order materials from England so that she could assemble her own along the same lines. Satisfied with the results, she convinced one of her brothers to take a few with him on his sales rounds through New England. When he returned, he brought home orders amounting to $5,000, an astounding sum for the time and far more than she had expected.

To fill this initial demand, Esther gathered her friends around a long table on the third floor of her home, completed the orders by informal assembly line, and found herself in business. The company was soon earning $100,000 and selling valentines across the country.

In 1874, she moved the operation to Harrington Corner, on Main Street.

Five years later, she merged with Edward Taft, the son of Jotham Taft, a North Grafton valentine maker who may have actually been in business before Howland. Together, she and the younger Taft formed the New England Valentine Co. (N.E.V.Co.).

It is a compelling story, melding the business drive of a single, educated woman — at a time when such an identity was unusual — with access and a cultural niche.

"She had greater access at the outset because of her father's business and her brothers' reach as salesmen," says Bill Wallace. "She had access to the market in both directions. What could have been a small local business mushroomed. It's the Worcester story — a story of entrepreneurship, the evolution of a small business into a giant."

In 1880, Esther's father had an accident and, befitting the custom of the time, she left her business to take care of him. Though her father died shortly thereafter, she chose not to return to work but instead moved to Quincy to live with one of her brothers until her own death in 1904.

George C. Whitney, owner of the Whitney Valentine Co. in Worcester, bought Howland's New England Valentine Co. in 1881; he also purchased Jotham Taft's business, among others. It was the Whitney Co., with its factory on Union Street, which defined valentine production in Worcester for many years.

Whitney soon made the transition from cards made by hand using materials that had to be ordered from Europe to machine-printed valentines. In addition, when commercial printers were allowed to print postcards in the late 1890s, Whitney began to produce valentine postcards. By the time that the factory closed in 1942, the victim of wartime paper shortages, valentines had become commonplace.

With greeting cards an established element within American popular culture by World War II, it does not seem like much of a sea change that children can now buy boxed Harry Potter valentines at CVS.

But what is Worcester's legacy?

Esther Howland is known as the first person in Worcester to make valentines, though Jotham Taft may have actually been the first commercial producer in the United States. Howland's greater significance may be her use of the concept of the assembly line decades before Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Co.

In her business, women sat in rows along tables, each choosing a different element to add to the card and passing it on to the woman next to her. The division of labor sped up production and increased efficiency. Moreover, it as also ensured that each card, known as "a built-up affair," was unique.

Howland's own creative talents brought about three significant changes in valentines. According to Ruth Webb Lee, author of "History of Valentines," the 1952 volume that may well be the valentine bible, Howland may have been the first to use brightly colored paper wafers that she slipped beneath different parts of the lacy paper to highlight figures or patterns in the lace. She also used printed verses and pasted them on the inside rather than the outside of the card. Finally, she invented the lift-up, or the use of paper springs to create a three-dimensional look by raising part of the design above the base layer.

Over 100 years after her death, valentines continue to be part of the fabric of Worcester's history.

"Even 20 years ago," says Wallace, "I could visit a nursing home in Worcester and talk to older women who, as girls, used to assemble boxes in the valentine factory as a summer job or do after-school piecework."

He has examined a range of census records to see if it is possible to construct a workforce at the Whitney factory. For any given year, however, it is impossible to tell who was working seasonally and who permanently, if someone identifying as "artist" designed valentines, or whether a "factory worker" indeed worked at Whitney or elsewhere. He suggests that most of the workers were probably young women, but "it's a mystery."

Similarly, in the earliest years, young women who worked around Esther Howland's table would probably have listed nothing more specific than "piece work"or "laborer" as their employment. The significance of what they were doing is only visible in hindsight, Mr. Wallace says. "For them, it was only a paycheck."

The Whitney valentines themselves yield tantalizing hints, with recurrent figures or characteristics that "might well have come from the same hand" or reflect an institutional template. As an example, he describes the fresh-faced "Campbell's Soup kids" that reappear in many valentines. They were probably the work of "a single artist who was never identified." He would love nothing more than to have someone come forward and recognize the work of a long-gone grandmother or aunt.

The Worcester Historical Museum has worked hard to keep the valentine story alive in the community, not only through exhibits but also through its annual valentine-making contest for elementary school children. For more than 35 years, children in grades 3 through 6 in Worcester schools have been invited to participate, and the museum offers educational materials for the project to teachers. There are three categories in which to submit — Verse, Historic or Contemporary — and children can use a variety of nonperishable materials.

"It's your chance to be part of Worcester history," says Wallace, noting that past winners, well into young adulthood, often come up to him to tell him that they won the contest as kids. "In commerce, there is usually not much about the process; this is a process people can actually do. People can relive the past."

The Worcester Historical Museum owns about two dozen original Esther Howland valentines, products of her solo business as well as when she worked with Edward Taft in the New England Valentine Co.

Carefully preserved in protective sleeves, they are lovely, the colors still vibrant and the delicacy of the work evident even well over a century later.

In addition, says librarian/archivist Robyn Conroy, "we have hundreds of valentines by George C. Whitney," which were produced on a much larger scale than Howland was able to do by hand.

The museum also owns sample books from the Whitney Co., resembling old-fashioned photograph albums with valentines pasted on black paper. "Some we got from the Whitney family," says Wallace, "and some from the Butler Dearden Paper Store."

Ms. Conroy notes that the collection attracts the most attention around Valentine's Day every year, when "we get our largest influx of visitors. Residents and scholars come in to look." Year-round, art scholars and valentine collectors arrive to see sample valentines, eager to examine originals.

The earliest Worcester valentines are sometimes indistinguishable, identifiable only by the maker's mark on the back.

Howland typically marked her valentines with a small red "H," either alone, on a small white label, or within a small white heart. After the creation of the New England Valentine Co., she used the embossed letters, "N.E.V.Co.," with a number.

Whitney's sign was a red W with a number, followed later by "Whitney" printed by machine.

"The sign is what counts," says Mr. Wallace, who notes that this feature is the only way to tell whether a 19th century valentine was made in the United States or in England.

Such a distinction is key when it comes to verifying and evaluating a collectible valentine. He runs into collectors with some regularity and recalls a talk he gave in Maine on valentines when a woman came up to him with several Taft and Howland valentines "in absolutely mint condition." She had found them at the Salvation Army and paid $1 or so apiece; the cards were easily worth 20 or more times that.

The example underscores the fact that old valentines "are around," he says. "And they're not where you might think they would be."

No matter who made them, these missives from the past continue to fascinate. The art of the handmade token of love, painstakingly created from paper lace and bits of brightly colored paper, has sadly disappeared, often found only in an elementary school classroom.

It's unlikely to be resurrected in an age when greetings are so often conveyed by email and text, Tweet and Facebook post.

Now what Esther Howland would think of an e-Valentine?

This story was originally published on Nov. 22, 2013.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Worcester's valentine legacy at the heart of the matter