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Detail 1

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This wallet was made by Alice Veronica Merrick, an employee at the Arms Manufacturing Company in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. By 1930, the year Alice Merrick began working for the company, it operated two plants, one in South Deerfield and another in Malden, Massachusetts. Together they employed 150. The company began when Dennis Arms began making pocketbooks for the New York market in the early 1840s. By 1845 he was employing two. On his death in 1851, his son Charles and his two brothers incorporated the Arms Brothers Company. Soon, they were operating facilities in Boston and New York. The other two brothers split with Charles in 1861, who continued operating in South Deerfield as the Arms Manufacturing Company. By 1930, the company was diversified beyond pocketbooks to other leather items such as writing cases. Edward B. Arms, the son of Charles and president of the company, died in 1940. The company continued operations through the World War II, but ended its South Deerfield operations around 1949.

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