Home Life in Colonial Days

by Alice Morse Earle

New Yorkers were not behindhand in industry. Lord Cornbury wrote home to England, in 1705, that he "had seen serge made upon Long Island that any man might wear; they make very good linen for common use; as for Woollen I think they have brought that to too great perfection."

In Cornbury's phrase, "too great perfection," may be found the key for all the extraordinary and apparently stupid prohibitions and restrictions placed by the mother-country on colonial wool manufacture. The growth of the woollen industry in any colony was regarded at once by England with jealous eyes. Wool was the pet industry and principal staple of Great Britain; and well it might be, for until the reign of Henry VIII. English garments from head to foot were wholly of wool, even the shoes. Wool was also received in England as currency. Thomas Fuller said, "The wealth of our nation is folded up in broadcloth." Therefore, the Crown, aided by the governors of the provinces, sought to maintain England's monopoly by regulating and reducing the culture of wool in America through prohibiting the exportation to England of any American wool or woollen materials. In 1699 all vessels sailing to England from the colonies were prohibited taking on board any "Wool, Woolfells, Shortlings, Moslings, Wool Flocks, Worsteds, Bays, Bay or Woollen Yarn, Cloath, Serge, Kersey, Says, Frizes, Druggets, Shalloons, etc."; and an arbitrary law was passed prohibiting the transportation of home-made woollens from one American province to another. These laws were never fully observed and never checked the culture and manufacture of wool in this country. Hence our colonies were spared the cruel fate by which England's same policy paralyzed and obliterated in a few years the glorious wool industry of Ireland. Luckily for us, it is further across the Atlantic Ocean than across St. George's Channel.

The "all-wool goods a yard wide," which we so easily purchase to-day, meant to the colonial dame or daughter the work of many weeks and months, from the time when the fleeces were first given to her deft hands. Fleeces had to be opened with care, and have all pitched or tarred locks, dag-locks, brands, and feltings cut out. These cuttings were not wasted, but were spun into coarse yarn. The white locks were carefully tossed and separated and tied into net bags with tallies to be dyed. Another homely saying, "dyed in the wool," showed a process of much skill. Blue, in all shades, was the favorite color, and was dyed with indigo. So great was the demand for this dye-stuff that indigo-pedlers travelled over the country selling it.

Madder, cochineal, and logwood dyed beautiful reds. The bark of red oak or hickory made very pretty shades of brown and yellow. Various flowers growing on the farm could be used for dyes. The flower of the goldenrod, when pressed of its juice, mixed with indigo, and added to alum, made a beautiful green. The juice of the pokeberry boiled with alum made crimson dye, and a violet juice from the petals of the iris, or "flower-de-luce," that blossomed in June meadows, gave a delicate light purple tinge to white wool.

The bark of the sassafras was used for dyeing yellow or orange color, and the flowers and leaves of the balsam also. Fustic and copperas gave yellow dyes. A good black was obtained by boiling woollen cloth with a quantity of the leaves of the common field-sorrel, then boiling again with logwood and copperas.

In the South there were scores of flowers and leaves that could be used for dyes. During the Revolutionary War one enterprising South Carolinian got a guinea a pound for a yellow dye he made from the sweet-leaf or horse-laurel. The leaves and berries of gall-berry bush made a good black much used by hatters and weavers. The root of the barberry gave wool a beautiful yellow, as did the leaves of the devil's-bit. The petals of Jerusalem artichoke and St.-John's-wort dyed yellow. Yellow root is a significant name and reveals its use: oak, walnut, or maple bark dyed brown. Often the woven cloth was dyed, not the wool.

The next process was carding; the wool was first greased with rape oil or "melted swine's grease," which had to be thoroughly worked in; about three pounds of grease were put into ten pounds of wool. Wool-cards were rectangular pieces of thin board, with a simple handle on the back or at the side; to this board was fastened a smaller rectangle of strong leather, set thick with slightly bent wire teeth, like a coarse brush. The carder took one card with her left hand, and resting it on her knee, drew a tuft of wool across it several times, until a sufficient quantity of fibre had been caught upon the wire teeth. She then drew the second wool-card, which had to be warmed, across the first several times, until the fibres were brushed parallel by all these "tummings." Then by a deft and catchy motion the wool was rolled or carded into small fleecy rolls which were then ready for spinning.

Wool-combs were shaped like the letter T, with about thirty long steel teeth from ten to eighteen inches long set at right angles with the top of the T. The wool was carefully placed on one comb, and with careful strokes the other comb laid the long staple smooth for hard-twisted spinning. It was tedious and slow work, and a more skilful operation than carding; and the combs had to be kept constantly heated; but no machine-combing ever equalled hand-combing. There was a good deal of waste in this combing, that is, large clumps of tangled wool called noil were combed out. They were not really wasted, we may be sure, by our frugal ancestors, but were spun into coarse yarn.

An old author says: "The action of spinning must be learned by practice, not by relation." Sung by the poets, the grace and beauty of the occupation has ever shared praise with its utility.

Wool-spinning was truly one of the most flexible and alert series of movements in the world, and to its varied and graceful poises our grandmothers may owe part of the dignity of carriage that was so characteristic of them. The spinner stood slightly leaning forward, lightly poised on the ball of the left foot; with her left hand she picked up from the platform of the wheel a long slender roll of the soft carded wool about as large round as the little finger, and deftly wound the end of the fibres on the point of the spindle. She then gave a gentle motion to the wheel with a wooden peg held in her right hand, and seized with the left the roll at exactly the right distance from the spindle to allow for one "drawing." Then the hum of the wheel rose to a sound like the echo of wind; she stepped backward quickly, one, two, three steps, holding high the long yarn as it twisted and quivered. Suddenly she glided forward with even, graceful stride and let the yarn wind on the swift spindle. Another pinch of the wool-roll, a new turn of the wheel, and da capo.