Rowley. A number of thirty-three respectable ladies of the town met at sunrise [this was in July] with their wheels to spend the day at the house of the Rev’d Jedidiah Jewell in the laudable design of a spinning match. At an hour before sunset, the ladies then appearing neatly dressed, principally in homespun, a polite and generous repast of American production was set for their entertainment, after which being present many spectators of both sexes, Mr. Jewell delivered a profitable discourse from Romans xii. 2: Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.
You will never find matters of church and patriotism very far apart in New England; so I learn that when they met in Ipswich the Daughters of Liberty were also entertained with a sermon. The Newbury patriots drank Liberty Tea, and listened to a sermon on the text Proverbs xxxi. 19. Another text used at one of these gatherings was from Exodus xxxv. 25: “And all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands.”
The women of Virginia were early in the patriotic impulses, yet few proofs of their action or determination remain. In a Northern paper, the Boston Evening Post of January 31, 1770, we read this Toast to the Southerners:—
NEW TOASTS.
The patriotic ladies of Virginia, who have nobly distinguished themselves by appearing in the Manufactures of America, and may those of the Massachusetts be laudably ambitious of not being outdone by Virginians.
The wise and virtuous part of the Fair Sex in Boston and other Towns, who being at length sensible that by the consumption of Teas they are supporting the Commissioners & other Tools of Power, have voluntarily agreed not to give or receive any further Entertainments of that Kind, until those Creatures, together with the Boston Standing Army, are removed, and the Revenue Acts repealed.
May the disgrace which a late venal & corrupt Assembly has brought upon a Sister Colony, be wiped away by a Dissolution.
This is pretty plain language, but it could not be strange to the public ear, for ere this Boston women had been appealed to in the press upon this same subject.
In the Massachusetts Gazette, as early as November 9, 1767, these lines show the indignant and revolutionary spirit of the time:
Young ladies in town and those that live round