Colonial dames and good wives

by Alice Morse Earle

Till the web was completed and fit for the loom,

Then labor was pleasure, and industry smiled,

And the wheel and the loom every trouble beguiled,

And there at the distaff the good wives were made.

Thus Solomon’s precepts were fully obeyed.

The manufacture of the farm-reared wool was not so burdensome and tedious a process as that of flax, but it was far from pleasant. The fleeces of wool had to be opened out and cleaned of all sticks, burrs, leaves, feltings, tar-marks, and the dirt which always remained after months’ wear by the sheep; then it had to be sorted out for dyeing, which latter was a most unpleasant process. Layers of the various colors of wools after being dyed were rolled together and carded on coarse wool-cards, again and again, then slightly greased by a disagreeable and tiresome method, then run into rolls. The wool was spun on the great wheel which stood in the kitchen with the reel and swifts, and often by the glowing firelight the mother spun. A tender and beautiful picture of this domestic scene has been drawn by Dr. Gurdon Russell, of Hartford, in his Up Neck in 1825.

My mother was spinning with the great wheel, the white rolls of wool lay upon the platform, and as they were spun upon the spindle, she turning the wheel with one hand, and with extended arm and delicate fingers holding the roll in the other, stepping backwards and forwards lightly till it was spun into yarn, it formed a picture to me, sitting upon a low stool, which can never be forgotten. Her movements were every grace, her form all of beauty to me who opposite sat and was watching her dextrous fingers.

The manufacture of flax into linen material was ever felt to be of vast importance, and was encouraged by legislation from earliest colonial days, but it received a fresh impulse in New England through the immigration of about one hundred Irish families from Londonderry. They settled in New Hampshire on the Merrimac about 1719. They spun and wove by hand, but with far more skill than prevailed among those English settlers who had already become Americans. They established a manufactory according to Irish methods, and attempts at a similar establishment were made in Boston. There was much public excitement over spinning. Women, rich as well as poor, appeared on Boston Common with their wheels, thus making spinning a popular holiday recreation. A brick building was erected as a spinning-school, and a tax was placed in 1737 to support it. But this was not an industrial success, the excitement died out, the public spinning-school lost its ephemeral popularity, and the wheel became again simply a domestic duty and pride.

For many years after this, housewives had everywhere flax and hemp to spin and weave in their homes, and the preparation of these staples seems to us to-day a monumental labor. On almost every farm might be seen a patch of the pretty flax, ripening for the hard work of pulling, rippling, rotting, breaking, swingling, and combing, which all had to be done before it came to the women’s hands for spinning. The seed was sown broad-cast, and allowed to grow till the bobs or bolls were ripe. The flax was then pulled and spread neatly in rows to dry. This work could be done by boys. Then men whipped or threshed or rippled out all the seed to use for meal; afterwards the flax stalks were allowed to lie for some time in water until the shives were thoroughly rotten, when they were cleaned and once more thoroughly dried and tied in bundles. Then came work for strong men, to break the flax on the ponderous flaxbreak, to get out the hard “hexe” or “bun,” and to swingle it with a swingle knife, which was somewhat like a wooden dagger. Active men could swingle forty pounds a day on the swingling-board. It was then hetchelled or combed or hackled by the housewife, and thus the rough tow was gotten out, when it was straightened and made ready for the spruce distaff, round which it was finally wrapped. The hatchelling was tedious work and irritating to the lungs, for the air was filled with the fluffy particles which penetrated everywhere. The thread was then spun on a “little wheel.” It was thought that to spin two double skeins of linen, or four double skeins of tow, or to weave six yards of linen, was a good day’s work. For a week’s work a girl received fifty cents and “her keep.” She thus got less than a cent and a half a yard for weaving. The skeins of linen thread went through many tedious processes of washing and bleaching before being ready for weaving; and after the cloth was woven it was “bucked” in a strong lye, time and time again, and washed out an equal number of times. Then it was “belted” with a maple beetle on a smooth, flat stone; then washed and spread out to bleach in the pure sunlight. Sometimes the thread, after being spun and woven, had been washed and belted a score of times ere it was deemed white and soft enough to use. The little girls could spin the “swingling tow” into coarse twine, and the older ones make “all tow” and “tow and linen” and “harden” stuffs to sell.

To show the various duties attending the manufacture of these domestic textiles by a Boston woman of intelligence and social standing, as late as 1788, let me quote a few entries from the diary of the wife of Col. John May:—