“All kinds of Spinning Wheels and Reels made and repaired by Joel Baldwin of Bristol living on the road from Cambridge Meeting-House to Farmington.
“N. B. Two handed wheels are highly recommended to young Women, as they can spin one third faster on them.
“Bristol, Dec. 15.”
And then the spinning-bees and spinning classes—the sewing circles of those days. Both Connecticut and Massachusetts as early as 1640 took legal steps to encourage the culture and spinning of flax, and every family was ordered to spin a certain amount of flax a year on penalty of a fine, and often prizes were offered for quantity and quality. On Boston Common the spinsters would sometimes meet with their wheels, and sit them down to spin—rich and poor alike, to the number, once, of three hundred. Think you the haughty spinsters of Boston would do the like to-day? On one occasion they were preached to by the minister in a long and profitable sermon, and a collection of £453 was taken up. This most edifying event took place in 1754.
Sermons and spinning evidently went hand in hand, for I find in the Litchfield “Monitor” for May 16, 1798, the following item of news:—
“South Farms, May 7.
“On Wednesday, the 2d instant visited at the house of the Rev. Amos Chase, about 60 of his female friends parishioners:—Who made the very acceptable presentation of seventy run of Yarn to his family. In the course of the decent and cordial socialties of the afternoon, the ladies were entertained by their Pastor with a sermon adapted to the occasion,—from these words, Gen. xxxi. 43, ‘What can I do, this day, unto these my daughters?’”
From an address by the Rev. Grant Powers on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the town of Goshen, Connecticut, in 1838, I quote the following account of a great spinning-match among the ladies about 1772:—
“There arose a spinning-match, among the young married ladies, at the house of Nehemiah Lewis.... The trial was at the foot-wheel in spinning linen. The conditions were previously defined and agreed to, viz.: They might spin during the whole twenty-four hours if they chose. They were to have their distaffs prepared for them, and their yarn reeled by others. Upon the first trial at Lews’ house many did well. The wife of Stephen Tuttle spun five runs, which were equal to two and a half days’ labour when on hire. Several others spun four runs each; but Mrs. Tuttle came off victor. But this aroused the ambition of some of the unmarried ladies, and Lydia Beach, the daughter of Dea. Edmund Beach, of East-street, was the first to come forward and take up the gauntlet. She spun from early dawn to nine o’clock in the evening. She had her distaffs prepared, her yarn reeled, and her food put into her mouth. She spun in this time seven runs, three and a half days’ labour, and took the wreath from the brow of Mrs. Tuttle.”
Mr. Powers adds in a foot-note,