Tale of the Spinning Wheel — Section 4
“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, “Some of our Matrons say that ten runs were a week’s labour;
if so Miss Lydia performed the labour of four days and one-fifth of a day in one day.
” “Upon hearing of the exploit of Miss Beach [he continues in his address] the wife of Capt. Isaac Pratt, of the South part of the town, came upon the arena.
Between early dawn and the setting of the sun, she had actually spun six runs, but at this moment her husband interfered, and peremptorily forbade her proceeding further.
She sat down, and wept like a child, when she ought to have rejoiced, that she possessed a husband, in whose eyes her future health and happiness were more precious, than the brief applause which might arise from success in that contest.
” He goes on to say that Lydia Beach became the wife of Jesse Buel, son of Capt. Jonathan Buel, “while her garland was yet fresh upon her brow; but the doating husband was destined to see it wither down to the grave, for Lydia never enjoyed health from the hour of her triumph.
” From this it is evident that the spinning-wheel as well as the sewing-machine has had its victims.
It was well for these toiling women of the pioneer towns if they had husbands thoughtful enough to stop in time the self-sacrifice of daily labor at the wheel, as well as in this spinning-match for glory only.
Of such pious women Chaucer could scarcely have said:— “Deceite, weepynge, spynnynge, God hath give To wymmen kyndely that they may live.
” For not only did these women live, but also their families and their country because of their spinning.
The Stamp Act year was drawing on, and the storm of indignation was beginning to rumble in the distance, soon to burst like a tornado on England’s commerce with her colonies.
From Massachusetts to South Carolina the colonies were alive with patriotic societies of women called “Daughters of Liberty,” who banded themselves together with the agreement to drink no tea, and wear only what their own hands could spin and weave.
Among the Daughters of Stratford, Connecticut, were two children of a Tory father, of the elder of whom it is written, “that having lost her thimble she would not buy another, as it would be an imported article; and Polly, the little sister, scorning an English needle, learned to sew with a thorn.
” Think of that, all ye modern women to whom sewing is enough of a “thorn” in itself without using another to sew with.
Everywhere these Daughters met together to spin, once to the number of seventy in one place.
In Rowley, Massachusetts, “thirty-three respectable ladies,” as the story runs, “met at sunrise with their wheels to spend the day at the house of the Reverend Jedediah Jewell, in the laudable design of a spinning-match.
” Of course the Rev. Jedediah preached to them; but they were also given bodily sustenance in the form of a “polite and generous repast.
” All honor to these Daughters of the olden time whose spinning-wheels did surely spin out their country’s glorious destiny!
“Queens of Homespun,” Horace Bushnell called such women, “out of whom we draw our royal lineage.
” And to-day, another patriotic society of forty thousand modern Daughters, their descendants, have surely honored themselves in choosing for their insignia this very spinning-wheel and distaff, this symbol of their grandmother’s toil and self-sacrifice and patriotism; for in that little emblem are embodied all the blood and tears, the sorrow, the rejoicing, and the patient, steadfast labor of the women of the American Revolution.
The Rev. Mr. Powers in his centennial address, after eulogizing the men, thus speaks of these patriot women of our land:— “Nor do we speak of these _men_ only, but their _mothers_, their _wives_ and their _daughters_ were like them....
They sustained their full share in all the trials and dangers of the Ocean, of the wilderness, and of war!
Their courage in times of peril, and their fortitude in trials never forsook them!
They gave up their husbands and their sons for the cause of God and their country, and their example was all powerful.
And this was true, not only of _Pilgrim_ women, but of women in the Revolution.
This town possessed them.
I
will give one instance of this that it may be a memorial of her.
Abraham Parmele was a warm patriot in the Revolution ...
but in this it is said, he was thrown into the shade by the patriotism of his wife Mary Stanley that was.
She was fixed in the righteousness of the cause of the colonies, and when war broke out, she said they would prevail!
She said she could pray for the cause of America; and not in the darkest period of the conflict, when many faces were pale, and many hands were on their loins, did this woman’s confidence fail her in the least,—and her actions corresponded with her words.
Four different times did she fit out her own son Theodore for the battlefield, and gave him her parting blessing; and with her own hands did she make five soldiers’ blankets, not to sell, but sent them a present to the poor soldiers, who, after the battles of the day, had neither bed nor covering for the night.
Could soldiers thus sustained ever relinquish the cause of their country?
Never!
” In Townsend, Massachusetts, it is said that “a devoted mother and her daughters did in a day and a night shear a black and a white sheep, card from the fleece a gray wool, spin, weave, cut, and make a suit of clothes for the boy whom they were sending off to fight for liberty.
” W.
J.
Stillman in his Autobiography tells of a similar instance occurring in the pastor’s family in Newport, Rhode Island, in whose home his mother grew up.
Coming from such homes as these, no wonder that the boys of ’76 won that fight.
But New England was not alone in her encouragement of flax and wool culture.
Virginia, where wild flax grew in profusion, was even earlier than Massachusetts in arousing an interest in flax-spinning.
In 1646, two spinning-schools were established in Jamestown, and prizes were offered for the best work, until the whole colony was engaged in this home industry.
Every great and little plantation had its spinning-house, where the female slaves were kept busily spinning, the mistress herself joining in the work.
We are of course reminded of the spinning-house at Mount Vernon, where “Lady” Washington marshalled her dusky spinners.
It is said that she ravelled and dyed her old silk gowns and silk scraps, and had them woven into chair-covers.
Sometimes she did the reverse, weaving a dress for herself out of ravelled cushions and the General’s old silk stockings.
Madame Pinckney, another dame of high degree, was actively instrumental in starting the flax industries of South Carolina.
[Illustration: COTTON IN POD] The German settlers of Germantown were also great flax-growers, as attested by their town-seal, the device of their leader, Father Pastorius.
And what we now know as “Germantown” still testifies to their proficiency in the wool industries.
The wives and daughters of the Swedish colony, as early as 1673, employed themselves in spinning wool and flax, and many in weaving;
and the excellence shown by the wool and flax workers of New York occasioned uneasiness in the mother-country, which rightly saw in it the possible independence of the colonies of all English cloth and clothing.
