Part 3

The wives and daughters of the Swedish colony, as early as 1673, employed themselves in spinning wool and flax, and many in weaving; and the excellence shown by the wool and flax workers of New York occasioned uneasiness in the mother-country, which rightly saw in it the possible independence of the colonies of all English cloth and clothing.

The production and manufacture of cotton was not taken up in this country until 1770, three years after the invention of the spinning-jenny by Hargreaves. Cotton, in the earliest times, was spun like flax, first on the hand-distaff, and then on a wheel like the flax-wheel. For some time after its introduction into this country, it was far more expensive, and considered more of a luxury, than linen. It was called by the East Indian name of “hum-hum.” A work-pocket in the Litchfield Historical Society (see illustration) contains a piece of the first cotton cloth made in America. The pocket is large and was worn at the side, evidently to hold flax in while spinning, for some flax still remains in it. The growing and spinning of cotton cannot, however, be counted among the truly colonial industries.

The Stamp Act soon stirred all patriotic Philadelphians to the resolve to eat no “meat of the mutton kind,”—a resolve rendered still more stern in 1775. A wool-factory was fitted up, and, to quote Mrs. Alice Morse Earle,[2] “an appeal was made to the women to save the state. In a month four hundred wool-spinners were at work.” In the same year the Provincial Congress made an appeal to the people for thirteen thousand warm coats for the Continental army, to be ready for the soldiers when winter came. It was a time when all preparations for the war seemed to be in the most hopeless snarl, and army supplies were scarce and often lacking. To-day a contractor would make nothing of the job, possibly in more senses than one; but a hundred years ago the wool-wheels and hand-looms were set humming by hundreds of hearth-stones, and, writes Mrs. Earle again, “the order was filled by the handiwork of patriotic American women.” In the record book of some New England towns may still be found the list of the coat-makers.... Every soldier volunteering for eight months’ service was given one of these homespun, homemade, all-wool coats as a bounty. So highly were these ‘Bounty Coats’ prized, that the heirs of soldiers who were killed at Bunker Hill before receiving their coats were given a sum of money instead. The list of names of soldiers who then enlisted is known to this day as the ‘Coat Roll,’ and the names of the women who made the coats might form another roll of honor. The English sneeringly called Washington’s army the ‘Homespuns.’ They little knew the power and significance of that title. Well did Horace Bushnell call it “mother and daughter power.”

Thus we see that in New England the culture, spinning and weaving of wool, as well as flax, was as religiously encouraged as in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York. The great wool-wheel was as necessary an implement in every household as the little flax-wheel, for every home had by law to contain one spinner. Children of all classes were required to learn to spin wool, and met on equal footing over their work. Homespun became so universal a commodity that imported woolens were not missed when the time came to forbid them the country. It was a process of many months of hard labor to convert the raw fleece into the “all-wool goods a yard wide” which we cut up so recklessly to-day. Another old saying, “dyed in the wool,” represents another laborious process, that of dyeing the wool with homemade dyes. All kinds of homely flowers were used for these dyes, a beautiful green being made from goldenrod mixed with indigo. Blue, made from the blue paper that wrapped the old sugar-loaf, and from indigo bought from travelling pedlers, was the favorite color, possibly because the easiest to obtain; and the old blue dye-pot stood constantly in the chimney corner like the Frenchwoman’s _pot-au-feu_. We cannot help wondering if the coats of the “Homespuns” were blue. And the familiar blue of the patriot army? Was that also women’s work?

After the dyeing came the carding, a very deft process, and also a very dirty one, for the wool had first to be rubbed with melted swine’s grease—three pounds of grease to ten of wool. This process corresponded in purpose and method to the hetcheling of flax, as the wool was drawn into parallel fibres through bent wire teeth set in a leather or wooden rectangle, called a wool-card. Here are the wool-cards of Maria Tallmadge, second wife of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, the famous major of Connecticut’s Second Light Dragoons, the friend of Lafayette and confidant of Washington; they belong to the valuable collection of the Litchfield Historical Society. By these clumsy-looking implements the wool was twisted into little rolls, and was then ready for spinning.

This wool-spinning called for the most alert and graceful series of movements, to which our foremothers owe in large part their poise and dignity of carriage. The little roll of wool was placed on the spindle, the great wheel was given a quick turn, and the spinner stepped quickly backward three or four steps, holding the twisting yarn in her left hand high above her head: then with a quick forward movement she let it wind around the bobbin, and the process was repeated. An active spinner could spin six skeins a day, and to do this it is estimated that she walked with her backward and forward steps over twenty miles.

Yarn was wound from the spindle on clock-reels, and also on hand-reels called “niddy-noddies.” To be knitted it had also to be washed and cleaned.

To spin the finest yarn was a much desired accomplishment among housewives. It is said that one Mistress Mary Prigge once spun a pound of wool into eighty-four thousand yards—that is, nearly forty-eight miles.

All these different manipulations lasted many months, though they could be accomplished in much shorter time; they also furnished occupation for an entire family, from the grandmother down to the children, when on long winter evenings they all assembled before the kitchen fire.

It is impossible here to go into the home process of weaving this wool and linen thread; but it was no less laborious than all that had gone before. Suffice it to say that in almost every house throughout New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia the hand-loom was to be found, and every farmer’s daughter could weave as well as spin, although weaving was not so wholly woman’s work as was spinning. Homespun linen after being woven had to undergo about forty processes of bleaching, as it was still light brown in color. It was often kept out on the grass for weeks at a time, until at least sixteen months had elapsed since the planting of the flaxseed to the final evolution of the finished sheet or pillow-case. What modern linen is as firm, solid, and close-woven, and capable of being used a hundred years hence as this can be used to-day? What needle-work so fine? One can hardly believe that the same hands which made the soap and greased the wool could hem like that, embroider the finest edging and other work, make bead-bags, and knit the daintiest lace. All-around women they must have been to pass back and forth from the coarsest to the finest labor, and to keep their minds alert as well. Listen to one Abigail Foote’s diary, in the year 1775, and she a young girl:—

“Fix’d gown for Prude,—Mend Mother’s Riding-hood,—Spun short thread,—Fix’d two gowns for Welsh’s girls,—Carded tow,—Spun linen,—Worked on Cheese-basket, Hatchel’d flax with Hannah, we did 51 lbs. a-piece,—Pleated and ironed,—Read a sermon of Doddridge’s,—Spooled a piece,—Milked the cows,—Spun linen, did 50 knots,—Made a Broom of Guinea-wheat straw,—Spun thread to whiten,—Set a Red dye,—Had two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor’s,—I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationly,—Spun harness twine, scoured the pewter.”

All this besides washing, cooking, weaving tape, knitting, weeding, picking geese, and making social visits. And yet we talk about modern rush and hurry, and the “strenuous life.” It is merely a change of occupation. We hear it constantly said of our ancestors’ fine needle-work, delicate hand-writing, etc., “Oh, they had more time to do such things.” Would not Abigail Foote dispute that, think you? Also Mrs. John May, a prominent Boston woman, who writes in her diary for one day:

“A large kettle of yarn to attend upon. Lucretia and self rinse, scour through many waters, get out, dry, attend to, bring in, do up and sort 110 score of yarn; this with baking and ironing. Then went to hackling flax.”

Now she was not an over-worked farmer’s wife, but a city woman, the wife of a colonel. I do not believe they had one bit more time than we have. Manners and customs change, but this busy world was always busy, and it is true of all ages that “woman’s work is never done.” There are those who regret the disuse of these homely occupations, saying that the home has suffered with the modern broadening of “woman’s sphere.” They forget that a sphere must round itself out on all sides, leaving the centre at the same point: the rounding out of woman’s sphere leaves her centre still the home. And the home still centres in the woman; the country still centres in the home, and no mere change of womanly occupation can alter God’s fundamental law of human society. But for the comfort of those who would still see woman spinning as in the “good old times,” it is worthy of note that in Deer Isle, Maine, the spinning-match is still extant. True to patriotic tradition, the wool-spinners there have formed a “Martha Washington Benevolent Society,” which for fifty years, without a break, has held an annual spinning-match in August, twenty or more women assembling with their great wheels, and spinning with all the old-time dexterity. One of their number is one hundred and two years old, and during the past winter made, entirely without help, four large patch-work bed-quilts, double-bed size, and sold them at the sale which accompanies the match. The yarn which they spin through the year they knit into stockings and mittens for home use and for sale.

In New York City lives a family who are now developing these homely industries to their full artistic limits. One of the most interesting exhibits in the National Exposition of Children’s Work held in March, 1901, was a portière entirely hand-made by the young son and daughter of Douglas Volk, the artist, in their city home. The wool was spun and dyed by Marian Volk with vegetable dyes of her own making, and the boy wove it on a genuine loom, one hundred years old, brought from the heart of Maine. The room in which they spin and weave, with its home-made rugs, antique chairs, and brass candlesticks, its spinning-wheels, clock-reel, and loom, all in daily use, might be taken for the “living-room” of an old Maine farmhouse. The artistic possibilities of the old spinning and weaving were recognized a few years ago by Mrs. Volk while living at Lovell, her summer home in Maine, and she has successfully established there her new industry of home rug-making, every process of which is marked with the sincerity of hand-work—a noble handicraft indeed. Thus this time-honored occupation still thrives in the East, while in the remote and mountainous regions in the South, handweaving and spinning are still household arts—as also in many foreign countries.

But here must end the tale of the spinning-wheel in many ages and climes, though the tale is not half told. We have seen the centuries bear witness to the dignity of woman’s manual labor, of which the old dusty spinning-wheel is as glorious a symbol as are the tattered battle-flags a token of the soldier’s hard-fought field. Patriotism, self-devotion, sacrifice—all speak to us from the one and from the other. Woman’s labor has supported the home, has filled the breach in war-time, has clothed the world, and continues to do so to-day. For though the spinning-wheel is mute, the sewing-machine and the factory are not, and the “Song of the Shirt” goes on forever. The Daughters of Liberty spun for their country in the days of ’76, and they have lived again in every period of their country’s need—in the Sanitary Commission, in the women’s Red Cross Auxiliaries, in the “Dames” and “Daughters” of to-day. Let us thank God that we had such foremothers; thank Him that they and the forefathers gave us a country of which we may still be proud; thank Him that their spirit is still alive in our midst, for as the uprising of that spirit drove the tyrant from our shores in 1776, so it has ever since arisen, and still will rise to deliver our country from the perils of the hour—the peril from the greedy and corrupt politician, the perils of popular ignorance and luke-warm patriotism, and all other perils consequent upon the loss of our forefathers’ ideals. May this spirit never die, for the day of its disappearance is the day of our country’s doom. It is the duty and the privilege of our great Society to see that “old New England” never fails us, for it is her spirit that has burned high in the breast of American womanhood from Bunker Hill till now, and there stands its witness. Honor the old spinning-wheel and all it signifies, and to the spinster:

“Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her works praise her in the gates.”

FOOTNOTES

[1] Owned by the Litchfield Historical Society.

[2] To whose charming book, _Home Life in Colonial Days_, I am indebted for many facts relating to colonial spinning.