For more than a century after settlement, linen and tow were the predominant fabrics of early Pennsylvania. Linen is produced from the long fibers of the flax plant, tow from the short fibers. Most farmers planted about two acres of flax each year in the early spring, which supplied enough fiber for their new clothing, towels, table cloths and other household uses such as cheese sieves, ball cheese covers and wrappers for market butter.
Flax culture has been well documented so there’s no need to repeat the process here other than to note again the immense labor involved in planting, weeding, pulling the plants, retting, breaking, skutching, hackling and then spinning the line fiber and tow into yarn. “Yarn” is the weaver’s term for thread.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Southeastern Pennsylvania had about one weaver for every 15 to 20 households. The weavers were men, and it was generally low paid work. They wove mainly in the winter, and usually helped in the summer harvest fields as day laborers. Often too they had small farms of their own where they grew food as did most everyone else. They were not itinerants. I don’t know where the term “itinerant weaver” originated, but by looking at the weaver’s shop you see how impossible it would be to travel around.
Central to the shop was the loom, a medieval contraption with which the weaver, if he were so skilled, could produce astonishingly complex patterns. Also the shop held a hand cranked reel called a “swift,” which was used transfer the yarn onto large spools. As many as 24 spools were on a rack called a “scarn” from which the yarn was transferred to the “warping reel.” This reel was about six feet high and four feet in diameter. It held and organized the thousands of strands of yarn of the warp. From there the yarn was wrapped around the large “warp beam” of the loom and then fed through the “reeds” as individual strands. The warp is the term for the yarn strands going toward the weaver at his seat, the weft is the yarn in the bobbin of the shuttle that the weaver threw left and right. It’s rather difficult to describe this with words, and is better seen in action. Plans are afoot to have a German loom with a weaver demonstrating his craft at the upcoming Goschenhoppen Folk Festival in August (search: Goschenhoppen Historians, Inc.).
By raising and lowering various harnesses and shafts with foot pedals connected to different harnesses of warp yarn, the weaver could produce surprisingly complex twills and patterns. However, the bulk of local weaving was simple plain weave: linen, tow, wool or linsey-woolsey – a linen warp with a wool weft.
Samuel Kulp was a utilitarian fabric weaver near Harleysville in the 1820s who kept a journal. In the month of May in 1820 he wove 226 yards of fabric in 24 working days, which comes to 9.4 yards per day. His cloth was 45 inches wide. Most of his work was plain weave with little stripe. The barn, grain bags, wagon covers and such were woven from coarse tow. Tow was the short, course flax fibers unsuitable for making linen cloth. The ratio of linen to tow was about half and half. Specifically, only five percent of Kulp’s work involved dyed yarn, 14 percent was linsey-woolsey, 36 percent was linen, 31 percent tow and 14 percent was flannel.
The English novel Silas Marner, a staple of school curriculum some years ago, showed Silas, a miser, burying bags of gold coins that his weaving brought in. However, there weren’t too many bags of gold around here, as an 1827 entry notes Kulp wove 200 yards for which he received just eight dollars. Wool was also an important fiber and most farmers kept a small flock of sheep. In May the sheep were sheared after being washed to remove as much manure and dirt as possible. A sheep produced three or four pounds of fleece annually, enough for one person. The fleece were further cleaned and then carded with wool cards to untangle and orient the strands so they could be spun (the whole subject of “wool” shall be saved for another story).
Spinning was done on farmsteads by the women in the winter months. The whole enterprise depended on the skill of the spinner. If the yarn was coarsely spun, the weaver couldn’t do much except make coarse fabric. Considerable skill was required to get the right twist and thickness in the yarn. Flax and tow spinning wheels were the small wheels whereat the spinner sat. The mass of flax fiber was held in the distaff and from there was drawn through the spinner’s moistened fingers to the spinning wheel’s whirling flyer.
In addition to a flax wheel, every house had a cut reel whereon the spun yarn was wound. The “cut” was the basic unit of yarn measure used by the housewife and weaver. The cut reel had a circumference of 72 to 76 inches (or half that) and the wheel gave an audible click every 150 revolutions, which gave a cut of about 300 yards. The 300 yard unit was tied together on the reel and the next cut wound beside it. Six cuts formed a skein. This provided an accurate system of measurement for housewife and weaver. Spinning wheels and cut reels were precision instruments made by local furniture makers and needed to be uniform. They were often sold as a pair.
The housewife took her yarn to the weaver, and it was her own yarn that she eventually got back as cloth.
The local dyer and wool fuller were other craftsmen involved with textile production, but their story shall be saved for another day.
The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Township Historical Society. Contact Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with questions or comments.
