Part 11 (1/2)
Though weaving on hand-looms in our Northern and Middle states is practically extinct, save as to the weaving of rag carpets (and that only in few communities), in the South all is different. In all the mountain and remote regions of Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, and I doubt not in Alabama, both among the white and negro mountain-dwellers, hand-weaving is still a household art. The descendants of the Acadians in Louisiana still weave and wear homespun.
The missions in the mountains encourage spinning and weaving; and it is pleasant to learn that many women not only pursue these handicrafts for their home use, but some secure a good living by hand-weaving, earning ten cents a yard in weaving rag carpets. The coverlet patterns resemble the ones already described. Names from Waynesville, North Carolina, are ”Was.h.i.+ngton's Diamond Ring,” ”Nine Chariot Wheels”; from Pinehurst come ”Flowery Vine,” ”Double Table,” ”Cat Track,” ”Snow Ball and Dew Drop,”
”Snake Shed,” ”Flowers in the Mountains.” At Pinehurst the old settlers, of st.u.r.dy Scotch stock, all weave. They make cloth, all cotton; cloth of cotton warp and wool filling called drugget; dimity, a heavy cotton used for coverlets; a yarn jean which has wool warp and filling, and cotton jean which is cotton warp and wool filling; homespun is a heavy cloth, of cotton and wool mixed. All buy cotton warp or ”chain,” as they call it, ready-spun from the mills. This is known by the name of bunch-thread. These Pinehurst weavers still use home-made dyes. Cotton is dyed black with dye made by steeping the bark of the ”Black Jack” or scrub-oak mixed with red maple bark. Wool is dyed black with a mixture of gall-berry leaves and sumac berries; for red they use a moss which they find growing on the rocks, and which may be the lichen _Roccella tinctoria_ or dyer's-moss; also madder root, and sa.s.safras bark. Yellow is dyed with laurel leaves, or ”dye-flower,” a yellow flower of the sunflower tribe; laurel leaves and ”dye-flower” together made orange-red. Blue is obtained from the plentiful wild indigo; and for green, the cloth or yarn is first dyed blue with indigo, then boiled in a decoction of hickory bark and laurel leaves. A bright yellow is obtained from a clay which abounds in that neighborhood, probably like a red ferruginous limestone found in Tennessee, which gives a splendid, fast color; when the clay is baked and ground it gives a fine, artistic, dull red. Purple dye comes from cedar tops and lilac leaves; brown from an extract of walnut hulls.
The affectionate regard which all good workmen have for their tools and implements in handcrafts is found among these Southern weavers. One a.s.sures me that her love for her loom is as for a human companion. The machines are usually family heirlooms that have been owned for several generations, and are treasured like relics.
CHAPTER XI
GIRLS' OCCUPATIONS
Hatch.e.l.ling and carding, spinning and reeling, weaving and bleaching, cooking, candle and cheese making, were not the only household occupations of our busy grandmothers when they were young; a score of domestic duties kept ever busy their ready hands.
Some notion of the qualifications of a housekeeper over a century ago may be obtained from this advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Pennsylvania Packet_ of September 23, 1780:
”Wanted at a Seat about half a day's journey from Philadelphia, on which are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of unsullied Reputation, an affable, cheerful, active and amiable Disposition; cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female Concerns of country business, as raising small stock, dairying, marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pickling, preserving, etc., and occasionally to instruct two young Ladies in those Branches of Oeconomy, who, with their father, compose the Family. Such a person will be treated with respect and esteem, and meet with every encouragement due to such a character.”
Respect and esteem, forsooth! and due encouragement to such a miracle of saintliness and capacity; light terms indeed to apply to such a character.
There is, in the library of the Connecticut Historical Society, a diary written by a young girl of Colchester, Connecticut, in the year 1775.
Her name was Abigail Foote. She set down her daily work, and the entries run like this:--
”Fix'd gown for Prude,--Mend Mother's Riding-hood,--Spun short thread,--Fix'd two gowns for Welsh's girls,--Carded tow,--Spun linen,--Worked on Cheese-basket,--Hatchel'd flax with Hannah, we did 51 lbs. apiece,--Pleated and ironed,--Read a Sermon of Doddridge's,--Spooled a piece,--Milked the cows,--Spun linen, did 50 knots,--Made a Broom of Guinea wheat straw,--Spun thread to whiten,--Set a Red dye,--Had two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor's,--I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationly,--Spun harness twine,--Scoured the pewter.”
She tells also of was.h.i.+ng, cooking, knitting, weeding the garden, picking geese, etc., and of many visits to her friends. She dipped candles in the spring, and made soap in the autumn. This latter was a trying and burdensome domestic duty, but the soft soap was important for home use.
All the refuse grease from cooking, butchering, etc., was stored through the winter, as well as wood-ashes from the great fireplaces. The first operation was to make the lye, to ”set the leach.” Many families owned a strongly made leach-barrel; others made a sort of barrel from a section of the bark of the white birch. This barrel was placed on bricks or set at a slight angle on a circular groove in a wood or stone base; then filled with ashes; water was poured in till the lye trickled or leached out through an outlet cut in the groove, into a small wooden tub or bucket. The water and ashes were frequently replenished as they wasted, and the lye acc.u.mulated in a large tub or kettle. If the lye was not strong enough, it was poured over fresh ashes. An old-time receipt says:--
”The great Difficulty in making Soap come is the want of Judgment of the Strength of the Lye. If your Lye will bear up an Egg or a Potato so you can see a piece of the Surface as big as a Ninepence it is just strong enough.”
The grease and lye were then boiled together in a great pot over a fire out of doors. It took about six bushels of ashes and twenty-four pounds of grease to make a barrel of soap. The soft soap made by this process seemed like a clean jelly, and showed no trace of the repulsive grease that helped to form it. A hard soap also was made with the tallow of the bayberry, and was deemed especially desirable for toilet use. But little hard soap was purchased, even in city homes.
It was a common saying: ”We had bad luck with our soap,” or good luck.
The soap was always carefully stirred one way. The ”Pennsylvania Dutch”
used a sa.s.safras stick to stir it. A good smart worker could make a barrel of soap in a day, and have time to sit and rest in the afternoon and talk her luck over, before getting supper.
This soft soap was used in the great monthly was.h.i.+ngs which, for a century after the settlement of the colonies, seem to have been the custom. The household wash was allowed to acc.u.mulate, and the was.h.i.+ng done once a month, or in some households once in three months.
Thomas Tusser's rhymed instructions to good housekeepers as to the was.h.i.+ng contain chiefly warnings to the housekeeper against thieves, thus:--
”Dry sun, dry wind, Safe bind, safe find.
Go wash well, saith summer, with sun I shall dry; Go wring well, saith winter, with wind so shall I.
To trust without heed is to venture a joint, Give tale and take count is a housewifely point.”
Abigail Foote wrote of making a broom of Guinea wheat. This was not broom-corn, for that useful plant was not grown in Connecticut for the purpose of broom-making till twenty years or more after she wrote her diary. Brooms and brushes were made of it in Italy nearly two centuries ago. Benjamin Franklin, who was ever quick to use and develop anything that would benefit his native country, and was ever ready to take a hint, noted a few seeds of broom-corn hanging on an imported brush. He planted these seeds and raised some of the corn; and Thomas Jefferson placed broom-corn among the productions of Virginia in 1781. By this time many had planted it, but no systematic plan of raising broom-corn abundantly for the manufacture of brooms was planned till 1798, when Levi d.i.c.kenson, a Yankee farmer of Hadley, Ma.s.sachusetts, planted half an acre. From this he made between one and two hundred brooms which he peddled in a horse-cart in neighboring towns. The following year he planted an acre; and the tall broom-corn with its spreading panicles attracted much attention. Though he was thought visionary when he predicted that broom manufacture would be the greatest industry in the county, and though he was sneeringly told that only Indians ought to make brooms, he persevered; and his neighbors finally planted and made brooms also. He carried brooms soon to Pittsfield, to New London, and in 1805 to Albany and Boston. So rapid was the increase of manufacture that in 1810 seventy thousand brooms were made in the county. Since then millions of dollars' worth have gone forth from the farms and villages in his neighborhood.
Mr. d.i.c.kenson at first sc.r.a.ped the seed from the brush with a knife; then he used a sort of hoe; then a coa.r.s.e comb like a ripple-comb. He tied each broom by hand, with the help of a negro servant. Much of this work could be done by little girls, who soon gave great help in broom manufacture; though the final sewing (when the needle was pressed through with a leather ”palm” such as sailors use) had to be done by the strong hands of grown women and men.
Doubtless Abigail Foote made many an ”Indian broom,” as well as her brooms of Guinea wheat, which may have been a special home manufacture of her neighborhood; for many fibres, leaves, and straws were used locally in broom-making.