Barry, Leonora M. (1849–1930)

American labor organizer, temperance leader, and popular public speaker. Name variations: Mrs. Barry-Lake, Mother Lake, Leonora Marie Lake. Born Leonora Marie Kearney in Kearney, County Cork, Ireland, on August 13, 1849; died in Minooka, Illinois, on July 15, 1930; only child of John and Honor Granger (Brown) Kearney; received public school education and private instruction; married William E.Barry, on November 30, 1871 (died 1881); married Obadiah Read Lake, on April 17, 1890 (died 1923); children: (first marriage) Marion Frances (b. 1873), William Standish (b. 1875), Charles Joseph (b. 1880).

Born in Ireland, Leonora Barry immigrated to America with her parents in 1852. Her father, a farmer, brought his family to Pierrepont, a rural town in upstate New York. There, Barry attended local schools and took an extra year of private study, receiving a teaching certificate at the age of 16. She taught in a nearby rural school for several years until her marriage to William E. Barry, a fellow Irish immigrant, who was a painter and itinerant musician. With their three children, the couple lived in several towns across upstate New York and western Massachusetts. While living in Amsterdam, New York, in 1881, Leonora Barry lost her husband and her only daughter when the two died within four months of each other.

At first, 32-year-old Barry took in sewing to support her two young sons, but the work proved too erratic, the eyestrain too great. She then took a job in one of Amsterdam's knitwear factories, that city's leading industry. As an unskilled hosiery maker, the young widow was soon overwhelmed by the harsh working conditions and low wages. Like many workers, Barry turned to the trade union movement as a way to alleviate some of the hardships. In 1884, she joined a local assembly of the Knights of Labor. Founded in 1869, the Knights were at their membership peak during the mid-1880s when Barry joined their ranks. She soon moved into positions of leadership, first on the local level when she became president of her local, the Victory assembly which was made up of 1,500 female knitwear workers. In 1885, she became president of District Assembly 65, which represented 52 locals with a total membership of over 9,000. By 1886, Barry was working as an national organizer for the Knights and was constantly on the road for the next three years.

In 1889, Barry retired from organizing and the following year married Obadiah Read Lake, a St. Louis printer. No longer forced to work to support herself, she now used her "tall commanding figure" and warm voice on behalf of the temperance cause as well as the fight for women's suffrage. She did not, however, immediately leave the trade union movement behind. In 1893, she spoke before the World's Representative Congress of Women at Chicago's Columbian Exposition on "The Dignity of Labor." Barry was active in both the Woman's Christian Temperance League and the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America. Sometimes referred to as "Mother Lake," she was much in demand as a speaker for the Redpath and Slayton agencies and on the Chautauqua circuit until shortly before her death. Leonora Barry died of cancer of the mouth in Minooka, Illinois, a month before her 81st birthday.

sources:

Levine, Susan. Labor's True Woman: Carpet Weavers, Industrialization, and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1984.

Kathleen Banks Nutter , Department of History, University of Massachusetts at Amherst