During the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, clothing the family was no small undertaking to the already burdened farm wife. Added to that was the job of providing fabric for such things as bed sheets, ticking, pillow cases, hand towels and table cloths. So much of the woman’s life was wrapped up in the creation of fabric that the term “distaff,” the stick or spindle onto which wool or flax is wound for spinning, has come to mean “of or concerning women in general.”
Cotton does not grow this far north and was a little used luxury for the Pennsylvania Dutch. Called baam wolle, literally “tree wool” in the dialect, cotton could be bought by the pound. There is evidence of its being spun on the local farmsteads, but the primary fabrics of the early days in this area were linen and wool with sometimes a combination of the two called linsey-woolsey: a wool warp with a linen weft.
To start with a small flock of sheep and end with a piece of wool fabric was no small thing. The sheared wool handed to the women had to be picked clean of debris, washed, carded to straighten the fibers, and spun into thread on a “wool wheel.” Often the yarn was taken to the village dyer and then to the weaver. The weaver gave the woolen threads a loose weave because the finished cloth was usually delivered to the fulling mill where mechanical agitation in a bath containing fullers’ earth, a type of clay, removed the greasy lanolin from the wool and also shrank the weave into its final tightness.
But the universal fabric of the early days was linen, product of the flax plant. Flax culture was brought with the immigrants; and until the Civil War era, it’s safe to say that every farmstead saw planted about a quarter acre of flax for each family member. Requiring good, fertile ground, the quarter acre of flax could yield about one complete set of clothing for one person. However, the amount of work required to grow and process flax was prodigious.
Flax culture involved the whole family: men to prepare the ground, children to weed the field, break and hackle the dried stalks, and women to spin the fibers into thread.
Briefly, to make linen the field had to be prepared, the flax seed sown, the young flax field weeded by barefoot children, the mature flax stalks pulled by hand, the stalks bundled and seasoned, the stems broken, the fibers cleaned, straightened, and finally spun into thread called yarn. The linen yarn was then taken to the dyer or weaver. Weaving was a men’s skilled trade and not done at the farmstead. The weaver was paid cash or more commonly he kept about 10 percent of the fiber for his fee.
So important was flax that wills often specified in detail the legacy of flax that the son inheriting the farm needed to provide to the widow. (Incidentally, in the Germanic culture it was often the youngest son, not the eldest, that inherited the farm. The youngest son then needed to care for the aged parents). The widow was often left with part of an acre (half, quarter or eighth) which the son had to sow yearly. At times the wife was even given the right to select the seed in order to guarantee the best for her. Typical is a Union County will of 1822 which remember the widow with the order: “She shall have yearly a quarter of flax land sown on my plantation and to be broken and swingled [prepared for spinning] by the person whom I shall give and bequeath my plantation.”
Many times the allotment of land for flax and other provisions was quite detailed as in the following 1820 will from Lehigh County; “It is my will that the tenant of the plantation shall each and every year plant for the use of the widow one acre of Indian corn and one quarter of an acre of potatoes, and one quarter of rsqwdqan acre of flax, but the widow must find the seed of them, the tenant hauling home all the same, and the tenant must plow the land, and must put dung on the land and planting for the widow.” In the same county in 1782 the son was expected to give his mother annually “one quarter flax land and half a quarter of Pottattoes land.”
So important also were the tools for processing flax that they are often detailed in wills. “One flax break” became the wife’s property on the basis of a Berks will in 1786. In 1804 in Lebanon County “Two hatchels…two flax breaks, two spinning Wheals” were given first to the daughter and then to the grandchildren. In Lancaster County in that same year the widow inherited two spinning wheels, reel, yarn and weaving utensils.
The fact that flax land and flax processing tools are so frequently bequeathed is an indication of the importance of homespun cloth in the early days.
Also of interest-Bob Wood’s History talks, Thursdays 1 to 2 p.m. at Studio B, Boyertown. Topic for Thursday, June 11, “The Henry Antes House.” This little known local house, built in 1736, has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Historical Society. Call Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with comments.
