Mystery Photo: Anaconda Pioneers

Here are two photographs of Anaconda Pioneers, the top taken at a dinner on October 26th, 1950 and the bottom at a dinner on November 5, 1953. An Anaconda newsletter from 1945 reported that employees were already making plans for a club that would be open to anyone who had been with Anaconda Wire & Cable Company, or one of its predecessors, for at least twenty years. The organization must have been slightly delayed, however, because its first president was not elected until 1947.

Cover of an Anaconda Pioneers brochure from our pamphlet collection showing the club’s covered wagon logo, which also appears on the banner in the top photograph. This brochure was printed in 1950 and includes a list of members as well as the club’s constitution and bylaws.

In 1950, the president of the Pioneers was mechanical engineer Frank Lynch, the only person identified so far in these two photographs. In the top photograph he is fourth from the left, behind the flowers, and in the bottom photograph he is on the left. Frank’s father Jack was an expert in wire drawing, and started work at National Conduit & Cable Company on the Hastings waterfront in 1891. In 1920, at the age of 16 or 17, Frank joined his father at NC&C. In 1923 American Brass took over from NC&C, and then in 1929 the company was absorbed into Anaconda Wire & Cable Company. By 1965, when Frank retired, he had been working on the same site for 46 years.

Do you know where these photographs were taken? (The photograph below looks like it was taken in Schmidt’s Farm, the subject of a previous post.) Do you recognize any of the other people in them? What can you tell us about them?