The Tale of the Spinning Wheel

by Elizabeth C. Barney Buel

NICY MELINDA’S WOOL WHEEL

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.

NICY M HOPKINS NO. 10

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.

FLAX

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.