WOMAN WITH HETCHEL.
15TH-CENTURY
Doubtless John Alden improved his opportunities when he was told to speak for himself; at least, let us hope that Priscilla did not have to hint about everything.
It was a good day’s work to spin two skeins of twenty knots each, every knot having usually forty threads. For this work a woman earned eight cents a day and her keep. In the valley of Wyoming, where so many Connecticut families emigrated to meet their terrible doom later on at the hands of the Indians, a woman was paid six shillings a week for her labor at spinning.
Before the threads could be woven they had still to pass through a long and laborious process of bleaching by soaking them in many waters, then with hot water and ashes over and over again, then in clear water again for a week, then a final seething, rinsing, beating, washing, drying, and winding on bobbins, when they were at last ready for the loom.
CLOCK REEL
Such was the far from simple process of flax-culture and spinning on the farm: when we remember that wool culture and spinning was scarcely less laborious, and that the home weaving of both kinds of thread has not yet been taken into the account, we shall begin to realize what it meant to the women of ’76 when they voluntarily took oath to wear naught but homespun, they and their sons and their daughters.
But there was much social enjoyment in it too, and much interest excited by the offering of prizes to efficient and rapid spinsters. It was not unusual for a woman in those days to tuck her baby under one arm, tie her wheel behind her, and trot off on horseback to spend the day in spinning with a neighbor. Many a well-to-do matron “had a touch so skilful that she could spin two threads, one in each hand, while she kept the treadle of her flax-wheel moving with her foot, held the baby asleep across her knees, and talked with her visitors.” Or, when weather permitted, “the wide hospitable door would be thrown open, and the thrifty house-wife in afternoon dress of mull or ‘taffety’ and a fine cambric apron, would step back and forth before the great wool-wheel set in the spaceway spinning fine yarn while neighbors dropped in.”
Speaking of two-handed wheels, I find the following quaint advertisement in the Hartford “Courant” for January 5, 1801:—