Part 2

As Helen embroidered the combats of Greeks and Trojans, so now, two thousand years later, Queen Matilda and her maidens are seen spinning and weaving the Norman Conquest of England into the Bayeux Tapestry. Surely the muse Clio might wield spindle as well as stylus as a symbol of her patronage of history. It was no shame to those high-born women to ply the distaff and figure in the songs of chivalry as the makers of all manner of household fabrics.

“My love to fight the Saxon goes, And bravely shines his sword of steel; A heron’s feather decks his brows, And a spur on either heel; His steed is blacker than a sloe, And fleeter than the falling star; Amid the surging ranks he’ll go And shout for joy of war.

“Twinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle, Let the white wool drift and dwindle; Oh! we weave a damask doublet For my love’s coat of steel. Hark! the timid turning treadle Crooning soft old-fashioned ditties, To the low, slow murmur of the Brown, round wheel.”

So sang an Irish maid of long ago, and to-day we still look to Ireland for some of the finest spinning and weaving in existence.

It would be trite to refer to Margaret, dreaming of Faust over her spinning, were she not eminently typical. What maiden of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did not sit in the garden idly spinning her allotted tasks while her thoughts were far away? It is a picture based on fact, as all great literary pictures are.

But our own immediate foremothers beckon us, and we must linger no longer in ancient times and foreign lands. What have the spinning-wheels here to tell us, as they lie gathering the dust of a century in some old musty garret—though an irate New England house-wife might declare that not even the dust of a week ever gathered in her garret—or are brought down to the “best parlor,” where they stand in honorable retirement tied up with ribbon? We know that at least every other one of them must have “come over” in the Mayflower, else how could so many yarns have been spun regarding the capacity of our ancestral ship? Here is a wool-wheel[1] (see illustration), not so old as many others, perhaps, but all the more interesting for that, inasmuch as it proves how recently the real old homespun held its place amongst us. This wheel is a little out of the common. It was made by one William Hopkins, a resident of Litchfield, for his daughter, Nicy Melinda, about 1825. William Hopkins was a direct descendant of Joseph Harris, one of Litchfield’s pioneers, who fell a victim to the tomahawk on Harris Plains in 1723. He had married Mary Hopkins of West Hartford, and lived just below the Symington Cottage. His daughter Abigail married a cousin Asa Hopkins, and their son Harris married Margaret Peck, sister of Paul Peck, “the mighty hunter,” and became the father of William Hopkins of the spinning-wheel. William was a clever mechanic, and made this wheel to suit Nicy’s particular fancy. It has two heads instead of one,—a new and an old fashioned one,—and the edge of the wheel is narrow and has a little groove in it instead of being broad and flat. Nicy Melinda married John A. Woodruff, and lived on a farm this side of the Town-house first; then they sold out there and came into Litchfield, where they took up a residence on West Street. She died in 1888. She was Woodruff’s second wife, and her step-daughter, Mrs. Abbie M. Woodruff Newcomb, has loaned to the Litchfield Historical Society a collection of linen spun and woven by her. It consists of sheets, pillow-slips, as they were called, and table-cloths; and there is also a red broadcloth cloak entirely home-made. Her reel is also still in existence, and has been presented to this Society. The illustration shows the marking on the linen worked by her in black sewing-silk, the fine threads being counted at every stitch. Think of the labor represented by every inch of this linen, whose sheen is hardly surpassed by the finest silk or satin, made on a lonely Connecticut farm by a busy woman, for whom it was only one of innumerable other tasks. Perhaps we had best pause here to outline this process of linen manufacture, that we may the better understand what the work of women like Nicy Melinda meant to our country in her time, but more particularly in the earlier times of the colonies and the Revolution. In speaking of the patriotic devotion of the men in our war for independence, of their bravery in battle, their dignity and wisdom in the council-hall, their patient endurance of every hardship and privation, we must not forget that their ability to meet these demands and to be what they were, was due to the independence of their homes of every outside help in supplying the necessaries of life, and this independence was due solely to the patient industry, the unceasing and voluminous manual labor of our grandmothers from their earliest childhood to their death. Every home farm supplied its own food and drink, medicine, fuel, lighting, clothing, and shelter. The very term “linen” as employed by our ancestors, meant the home-made article, “holland” always signifying that which was imported. Almost every article, in short, of household use and consumption was home-made, and home-made by the women. Women’s hands made all the supplies of soap and candles; they distilled all the medicines from the herbs of the field; they stocked the larder with pies and pickles, jams and jellies and preserves; they brewed the mead and metheglin, and all other household drinks; they churned the butter and made the cheese; they ran bullets, as we very well know in Litchfield, where the leaden statue of George III., torn down from the Bowling Green, New York, and hurried thither, was melted by Litchfield’s patriot women in the back orchard of Oliver Wolcott; and lastly, they spun into thread and yarn the flax and wool that was raised on the farm, and then knitted every pair of stockings and mittens, wove every inch of linen and woolen cloth, and cut and made every stitch of clothing worn by a family which generally numbered ten or a dozen Johns and Hezekiahs and Josiahs and Hepzibahs and Mehitable Anns. No wonder a man could go to the war for his country’s independence, when he left Independence herself at home in the person of his wife.

No properly brought up maiden of those days would think herself prepared to marry until she had collected in her “linen-chest” all the necessaries of housekeeping spun, and often woven, by herself, besides all things necessary to complete her trousseau. Ten pairs of linen sheets at least she must have, and she must “knit a pillow-slip full of stockings” before she could even think of the happy event. Thus the time of a young girl was largely used in spinning her own wedding outfit,—whether rich or poor, it made no difference. The wealthiest spun with the poorest, and you will find the spinning-wheel of both kinds in the musty old inventories of estates of every value, and in the “setting-out” of every bride, whether she left a farmer’s lonely homestead, or the proud colonial mansion of the well-to-do; the millionaire was an unknown species then.

Let us now see how much work there was in this spinning, which was only one of those numberless other things our grandmothers had to do.

Flax was sown in May, and when the plants were three or four inches high, they were weeded by the women and children, walking barefoot on account of the tender stalks. At the end of June, or in July, it was pulled up very carefully by the roots by men and boys and laid out to dry, being turned several times in the sun: this operation was called “pulling and spreading.” Then came the “rippling,” a process by which the stalks of flax were drawn with a quick stroke through an iron wire comb with coarse teeth: this broke off the seed-bolls, which were caught in a sheet and saved for the next year’s crop. The flax was still in the field, where it was now tied in bundles, called “beats” or “bates,” and stacked in a tent-shaped stack called a “stook.” When the stacks were dry they were again treated with water to rot the leaves. This was called “retting;” the bates of flax were piled in running water in a solid heap, and left for about five days, when they were taken up and the rotting leaves removed. When cleaned and dried the flax was once more tied in bundles. It was then broken by men on the great flax-brake in order to separate the fibres and get out from the centre the hard, woody “hexe” or “bun.” This clumsy instrument need not be described here, further than to say that a heavy beam set with slats, hinged to an under beam also set with slats corresponding to the intervals of the upper one, was weighted and allowed to fall on the flax laid in between. The flax was usually broken twice, then “scutched” or “swingled” with a swingling block and knife to remove any remaining bits of bark. The clean fibres were then made into bundles called “strikes,” which were swingled again, the refuse from the process being used for coarse bagging. The “strikes” were sometimes “beetled,” or pounded in a wooden trough over and over until soft. The flax was now ready for the process of hackling or hetcheling, which required great dexterity on the part of the hetcheler. The flax fibres were carefully drawn towards the hetcheler through the teeth of the hetchel (see illustrations, pages 33 and 34, taken from originals in the Litchfield Historical Society), thus pulling out the fibres into long continuous threads and combing out the shorter threads. This implement has given its name to that process of “heckling” so familiar, for instance, to hen-pecked husbands when lectured by irate wives. Our inelegant but expressive modern slang would say she “combed him down.” These are the “combs” she would use, figuratively at least, if not actually.

After the first hackle, six other finer ones were frequently applied, and the amount of good fibre left after all this hackling, even from a huge mass of raw material, was very small; but a very large quantity of linen thread could be spun from this small amount. The fibres were then sorted according to fineness by a process called “spreading and drawing.” Now at last the flax was ready for the wheel, and was wrapped around the distaff; the spinner seated herself at this familiar implement and spun out a long, even thread from the mass of fibre on the distaff. This thread she wound on bobbins as she spun it, and when the bobbins were full, she wound it off on a reel into knots and skeins. This was the clock-reel, which ticked when a certain number of strands had been wound in a “knot”; then the spinner would pause and tie the knot, and if at that moment some ardent admirer were watching this pretty and graceful occupation, it is not at all likely that the busy spinster could escape a more tangible proof of his admiration, for it is written that “He kissed Mistress Polly when the clock-reel ticked.”

Doubtless John Alden improved his opportunities when he was told to speak for himself; at least, let us hope that Priscilla did not have to hint about everything.

It was a good day’s work to spin two skeins of twenty knots each, every knot having usually forty threads. For this work a woman earned eight cents a day and her keep. In the valley of Wyoming, where so many Connecticut families emigrated to meet their terrible doom later on at the hands of the Indians, a woman was paid six shillings a week for her labor at spinning.

Before the threads could be woven they had still to pass through a long and laborious process of bleaching by soaking them in many waters, then with hot water and ashes over and over again, then in clear water again for a week, then a final seething, rinsing, beating, washing, drying, and winding on bobbins, when they were at last ready for the loom.

Such was the far from simple process of flax-culture and spinning on the farm: when we remember that wool culture and spinning was scarcely less laborious, and that the home weaving of both kinds of thread has not yet been taken into the account, we shall begin to realize what it meant to the women of ’76 when they voluntarily took oath to wear naught but homespun, they and their sons and their daughters.

But there was much social enjoyment in it too, and much interest excited by the offering of prizes to efficient and rapid spinsters. It was not unusual for a woman in those days to tuck her baby under one arm, tie her wheel behind her, and trot off on horseback to spend the day in spinning with a neighbor. Many a well-to-do matron “had a touch so skilful that she could spin two threads, one in each hand, while she kept the treadle of her flax-wheel moving with her foot, held the baby asleep across her knees, and talked with her visitors.” Or, when weather permitted, “the wide hospitable door would be thrown open, and the thrifty house-wife in afternoon dress of mull or ‘taffety’ and a fine cambric apron, would step back and forth before the great wool-wheel set in the spaceway spinning fine yarn while neighbors dropped in.”

Speaking of two-handed wheels, I find the following quaint advertisement in the Hartford “Courant” for January 5, 1801:—

“ALL kinds of SPINNING WHEELS and REELS made and repaired by JOEL BALDWIN of Bristol living on the road from Cambridge Meeting-House to Farmington.

“_N. B._ Two handed wheels are highly recommended to young Women, as they can spin one third faster on them.

“BRISTOL, Dec. 15.”

And then the spinning-bees and spinning classes—the sewing circles of those days. Both Connecticut and Massachusetts as early as 1640 took legal steps to encourage the culture and spinning of flax, and every family was ordered to spin a certain amount of flax a year on penalty of a fine, and often prizes were offered for quantity and quality. On Boston Common the spinsters would sometimes meet with their wheels, and sit them down to spin—rich and poor alike, to the number, once, of three hundred. Think you the haughty spinsters of Boston would do the like to-day? On one occasion they were preached to by the minister in a long and profitable sermon, and a collection of £453 was taken up. This most edifying event took place in 1754.

Sermons and spinning evidently went hand in hand, for I find in the Litchfield “Monitor” for May 16, 1798, the following item of news:—

“SOUTH FARMS, May 7.

“On Wednesday, the 2d instant visited at the house of the Rev. _Amos Chase_, about 60 of his female friends parishioners:—Who made the very acceptable presentation of seventy run of Yarn to his family. In the course of the decent and cordial socialties of the afternoon, the ladies were entertained by their Pastor with a sermon adapted to the occasion,—from these words, Gen. xxxi. 43, ‘_What can I do, this day, unto these my daughters?_’”

From an address by the Rev. Grant Powers on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the town of Goshen, Connecticut, in 1838, I quote the following account of a great spinning-match among the ladies about 1772:—

“There arose a _spinning-match_, among the young married ladies, at the house of Nehemiah Lewis.... The trial was at the foot-wheel in spinning linen. The conditions were previously defined and agreed to, viz.: They might spin during the whole twenty-four hours if they chose. They were to have their distaffs prepared for them, and their yarn reeled by others. Upon the first trial at Lews’ house many did well. The wife of Stephen Tuttle spun five runs, which were equal to two and a half days’ labour when on hire. Several others spun four runs each; but Mrs. Tuttle came off victor. But this aroused the ambition of some of the unmarried ladies, and Lydia Beach, the daughter of Dea. Edmund Beach, of East-street, was the first to come forward and take up the gauntlet. She spun from early dawn to nine o’clock in the evening. She had her distaffs prepared, her yarn reeled, and her food put into her mouth. She spun in this time seven runs, three and a half days’ labour, and took the wreath from the brow of Mrs. Tuttle.”

Mr. Powers adds in a foot-note,

“Some of our Matrons say that ten runs were a week’s labour; if so Miss Lydia performed the labour of four days and one-fifth of a day in one day.”

“Upon hearing of the exploit of Miss Beach [he continues in his address] the wife of Capt. Isaac Pratt, of the South part of the town, came upon the arena. Between early dawn and the setting of the sun, she had actually spun six runs, but at this moment her husband interfered, and peremptorily forbade her proceeding further. She sat down, and wept like a child, when she ought to have rejoiced, that she possessed a husband, in whose eyes her future health and happiness were more precious, than the brief applause which might arise from success in that contest.”

He goes on to say that Lydia Beach became the wife of Jesse Buel, son of Capt. Jonathan Buel, “while her garland was yet fresh upon her brow; but the doating husband was destined to see it wither down to the grave, for Lydia never enjoyed health from the hour of her triumph.”

From this it is evident that the spinning-wheel as well as the sewing-machine has had its victims. It was well for these toiling women of the pioneer towns if they had husbands thoughtful enough to stop in time the self-sacrifice of daily labor at the wheel, as well as in this spinning-match for glory only. Of such pious women Chaucer could scarcely have said:—

“Deceite, weepynge, spynnynge, God hath give To wymmen kyndely that they may live.”

For not only did these women live, but also their families and their country because of their spinning.

The Stamp Act year was drawing on, and the storm of indignation was beginning to rumble in the distance, soon to burst like a tornado on England’s commerce with her colonies. From Massachusetts to South Carolina the colonies were alive with patriotic societies of women called “Daughters of Liberty,” who banded themselves together with the agreement to drink no tea, and wear only what their own hands could spin and weave. Among the Daughters of Stratford, Connecticut, were two children of a Tory father, of the elder of whom it is written, “that having lost her thimble she would not buy another, as it would be an imported article; and Polly, the little sister, scorning an English needle, learned to sew with a thorn.” Think of that, all ye modern women to whom sewing is enough of a “thorn” in itself without using another to sew with.

Everywhere these Daughters met together to spin, once to the number of seventy in one place. In Rowley, Massachusetts, “thirty-three respectable ladies,” as the story runs, “met at sunrise with their wheels to spend the day at the house of the Reverend Jedediah Jewell, in the laudable design of a spinning-match.” Of course the Rev. Jedediah preached to them; but they were also given bodily sustenance in the form of a “polite and generous repast.” All honor to these Daughters of the olden time whose spinning-wheels did surely spin out their country’s glorious destiny! “Queens of Homespun,” Horace Bushnell called such women, “out of whom we draw our royal lineage.” And to-day, another patriotic society of forty thousand modern Daughters, their descendants, have surely honored themselves in choosing for their insignia this very spinning-wheel and distaff, this symbol of their grandmother’s toil and self-sacrifice and patriotism; for in that little emblem are embodied all the blood and tears, the sorrow, the rejoicing, and the patient, steadfast labor of the women of the American Revolution. The Rev. Mr. Powers in his centennial address, after eulogizing the men, thus speaks of these patriot women of our land:—

“Nor do we speak of these _men_ only, but their _mothers_, their _wives_ and their _daughters_ were like them.... They sustained their full share in all the trials and dangers of the Ocean, of the wilderness, and of war! Their courage in times of peril, and their fortitude in trials never forsook them! They gave up their husbands and their sons for the cause of God and their country, and their example was all powerful. And this was true, not only of _Pilgrim_ women, but of women in the Revolution. This town possessed them. I will give one instance of this that it may be a memorial of her. Abraham Parmele was a warm patriot in the Revolution ... but in this it is said, he was thrown into the shade by the patriotism of his wife Mary Stanley that was. She was fixed in the righteousness of the cause of the colonies, and when war broke out, she said they would prevail! She said she could pray for the cause of America; and not in the darkest period of the conflict, when many faces were pale, and many hands were on their loins, did this woman’s confidence fail her in the least,—and her actions corresponded with her words. Four different times did she fit out her own son Theodore for the battlefield, and gave him her parting blessing; and with her own hands did she make five soldiers’ blankets, not to sell, but sent them a present to the poor soldiers, who, after the battles of the day, had neither bed nor covering for the night. Could soldiers thus sustained ever relinquish the cause of their country? Never!”

In Townsend, Massachusetts, it is said that “a devoted mother and her daughters did in a day and a night shear a black and a white sheep, card from the fleece a gray wool, spin, weave, cut, and make a suit of clothes for the boy whom they were sending off to fight for liberty.” W. J. Stillman in his Autobiography tells of a similar instance occurring in the pastor’s family in Newport, Rhode Island, in whose home his mother grew up. Coming from such homes as these, no wonder that the boys of ’76 won that fight.

But New England was not alone in her encouragement of flax and wool culture. Virginia, where wild flax grew in profusion, was even earlier than Massachusetts in arousing an interest in flax-spinning. In 1646, two spinning-schools were established in Jamestown, and prizes were offered for the best work, until the whole colony was engaged in this home industry. Every great and little plantation had its spinning-house, where the female slaves were kept busily spinning, the mistress herself joining in the work. We are of course reminded of the spinning-house at Mount Vernon, where “Lady” Washington marshalled her dusky spinners. It is said that she ravelled and dyed her old silk gowns and silk scraps, and had them woven into chair-covers. Sometimes she did the reverse, weaving a dress for herself out of ravelled cushions and the General’s old silk stockings.

Madame Pinckney, another dame of high degree, was actively instrumental in starting the flax industries of South Carolina.

The German settlers of Germantown were also great flax-growers, as attested by their town-seal, the device of their leader, Father Pastorius. And what we now know as “Germantown” still testifies to their proficiency in the wool industries.