Category Archives: weavers

Living without a net; abandoned and orphaned children in the 1790’s

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Orphanages are a recent phenomenon. Most children, if they had no parents, or their parents couldn’t care for them, were abandoned to the streets. Although there was high infant mortality, adults died in great numbers as well so there were many orphans. And, in some cases, the orphans had a living parent. Usually a mother who was too poor to care for herself, let alone children. When she went into the poorhouse, the children went with her – or into an orphanage.

The Charleston Orphan House was set up in 1790, one of the first, if not the first, in the United States. This orphanage took only white children but took almost all in Charleston. They seem relatively progressive: the children weren’t apprenticed out until 12 and they were taught to read and write.

Apprenticeship or indenture was a common method of dealing with parentless children. Usually no one would take them younger than 6 or 7 because they were too young to work. After wards, they were expected to work like adults. To a modern sensibility, the possibilities for exploitation seem limitless and frightening.

What happened to the younger children? If they were still nursing, they went to a wet nurse. There was no substitute for breast milk and wet nursing was one of the few ‘careers’ for women. Foundlings were frequently sent to a wet nurse, some of whom kept the child until five or six. One wonders what it felt like for a child to have been nursed by a woman, only to be sent away. These abandonment issues probably never disappeared.

Modern studies have shown how important development is during these early month. A recent study on the Romanian orphanages detail quite vividly the effects of institutionalized living with no parenting or affection. The rates of autism, alcoholism and other damage are extremely high. But, in the late eighteenth century, simply providing enough food to children was a challenge. Disease was prevalent. In an orphange set up by the Royal College of Surgeons, 99.6% of the children died. 45 made it out alive.

I think of statistics like this when I see the safety net in this very wealthy country of ours being shredded and presidential candidates suggesting children be put to work. Certainly I am not opposed to chores, kids need to learn to take care of themselves and their surroundings, but do we really want to return to a time when little children had to work like adults so the wealthy could enjoy their privileged lifestyle. Ultimately, we will all have to decide: what kind of country do we want?

Sock it to me, a history of the amazing sock

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Our word for sock comes from the Latin soccus but socks have been around far longer that Roman times. According to Wikipedia, the earliest socks were found near the Nile in Egypt. They had split toes for use with sandals. Socks may have been around earlier than this and probably were, these were just the first found. Some of the researchers posit socks made of animal skins and tied around the ankles for warmth. Since the foot is one of the heaviest perspiration producers in the body, I can only imagine what those feet and socks smelled like.

The first knitting machine was invented in 1589, although it and hand knitters worked side by side until the early nineteenth century. Socks became a fashion statement: colorful tights that went up the leg to the breeches and German fashion slashed the overgarments to reveal their dashing hose underneath. These actually weren’t what we would call socks, but were stockings. As men’s trousers lenthened, the stocking diminished. During the Roaring Twenties, the argyle sock was popular but the color settled down to monchromes, and not very interesting ones at that, especially for men. (Anyone remember that scene in ‘The Birdcage’ where Nathan Lane, otherwise garbed in a boring gray suit, is wearing bright pink socks? Because one does want a hint of color.)

Fortunately, today, socks have had a renaissance and are available with patrons and/or bright colors.

 

Orphans and the Shakers

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Since the Shakers were celibate and did not reproduce themselves, they relied upon converts to increase membership. They also took in orphans or semi-orphans.

In a time when there was no safety net, no foster care, no food stamps, the injury or death of the man of the family was a catastrophe. No unemployment or workman’s comp either. Women had few options for work outside the home (wet nurse was one!) and when they did work they made far less than a man. Add in the prevalence of disease and there was a frightening number of orphans.

Semi-orphans, what was that? Well, if a single father or more often a single mother couldn’t support her children she had a few options. Depositing them on the Shakers’ doorstep was one. Indenturing them out if they were old enough (and children as young as six were indentured) was another. Babies couldn’t be indentured unless a premium was paid to the employer for the extra care. Orphanages? The first and for many years the only was set up in Charleston, SC in 1793. Black orphans were not welcomed. However, they did not apprentice children out before they were twelve which, for those days, was enlightened. Although these were children they were still worked hard and as susceptible to accidents and death as an adult. One account describes a thirteen year old boy apprenticed to a ship maker. A load of lumber fell upon him, killing him. They found a series of strange bruises on his leg, bruises from marbles. He was still a child who tried to play. Sometimes the employers were called up before the town fathers for excessive cruelty to their indentured servants but not often. Many of the children perished.

And where did you go if you couldn’t suppor yourself? The workhouse. The descriptions in Dickens’s novels, although they take place at a later time, are unfortunately all too accurate.  Sometimes, if a woman remarried, she would be able to recover her children.

So the lot of poor children was dire, for orphans and semi-orphans it was almost a death sentence. And babies were especially at risk. They are so vulnerable and if they were nursing especially so. In those days there really was no good alternative to mother’s milk. Many women survived by wet nursing infants. Some managed to nurse both their own and the others. Some wealthy woman put out an infant to nurse if they were ill or if their husband wanted a male heir. Since nursing confers some contraceptive effect they handed off an infant girl to a wet nurse so they could conceive again. What happened to the infants of the wet nurse. Many or the wealthy women did not want to have the child in their household or to share. Some of the wet nurses sneaked off to feed their child. Another option is to hire a cheaper wet nurse. There are many accounts of women who did so and while they were nursing another child their own died.

So the Shakers were by far the best and safest alternative for orphans. The fact that they educated these children, not only in all the skills they would need to live in the agrarian world, but also to read and write is amazing. They truly lived by their altruistic beliefs.

First peek at “A Simple Murder”

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By late afternoon Rees was past Rumford and heading southeast, almost to Durham and the coast. “Time to start looking for a place to stay,” he thought, eyeing dusk’s purple fingers clawing the rutted track. He’d look for a likely farm where he could camp for the night. Maybe some kind farmer would allow him space in the barn. Hollowed out by fury for most of the day (damn his sister! How could she push David, Rees’ little boy, out?) Rees was tired enough now to fall asleep in the wagon seat.

The cluster of buildings that was Durham appeared suddenly from bracelet of woods and farms. He plunged into the small village. Choose a road, any road, he thought, noting the possibilities branching off the central square. And he saw a tavern, The Cartwheel, if no generous farmers offered him the use of a barn. He turned onto the road doglegging south and soon after he spotted a white clapboard farmhouse, rising from a thin screen of trees on the western slope. A weathered red barn rose behind it, squatting on the edges of the fields wrested from the rocky soil. Rees directed Bessie onto the narrow bridge spanning the muddy creek. Perhaps anticipating fresh water and oats and the comfort of a stall, she jerked into a weary trot.

The house was a narrow clapboard, the boards weathered gray, with a small porch jutting from the front door. At the sound of hooves striking the stony drive, the farm wife stepped out from the front door and stared at Rees curiously. He pulled right up to the small porch and clumsily climbed to the ground. Driven by rage and fear, he’d pushed on without a break all day and now his body punished him for it. He staggered, awkward with stiff joints and muscles, up

the stairs towards her. A tiny woman with gray hair, she appeared younger close up. “Pardon Mistress,” Rees said, pulling off his dusty and travel stained tricorn, “I’m on my way to the Shaker community and I wonder if you might have space in your barn where I could sleep tonight.” Wiping her hands upon her apron, she glanced at the canvas-shrouded loom in the wagon bed.

“You a weaver?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m not looking for work right now though.” He paused and then, thinking she was most likely a mother, he burst out, “My son ran away from home.” Fatigue and the emotional stew of anger and fear made him more talkative usual. “My sister said he went with the Shakers.” The woman’s expression softened.

“I’ve lost family to them,” she said. “Of course…”

“What do you want here?” demanded her husband belligerently, stepping out from the house behind her. Much darker than his wife, he was black of hair and eyes.

And black of nature? Rees wondered, eyeing the other man’s scowl. Most farmers were hospitable to a traveling weaver.

Putting her pale freckled hand upon his mahogany dark tanned arm, his wife drew him inside. Rees clearly heard the work ‘Shakers’. A few moments later the farmer came back outside. “You can sleep in the barn,” he said, pointing with his chin at the red structure. “What’s your name? Mine is Henry Doucette. My wife Jane.”

“Will Rees,” Rees said, extending his hand. “Thank you.”

“Your horse looks all in,” Doucette said, casting a critical eye over Bessie. “You’re welcome to an empty stall.”
Rees nodded his thanks and climbed back into the wagon. With the day’s journey finally nearing its end, both Rees and Bessie allowed fatigue to overtake them.  Rees wasn’t sure they could make even the short trip across the yard to the barn.

Rees got Bessie settled in with fresh water and a nosebag of oats. When he returned to his wagon, he found a boy of about twelve waiting for him with a napkin covered dish and a jug of water. “My stepmother sent this up for your supper,” the boy said, thrusting the dishes into Rees’ hands. Although fair-haired, the boy was almost as darkly tanned as his father right down to his bare feet. And of an age with David, Rees thought.

“Thank her for me,” Rees said, staring down at the plate in grateful surprise. “This is very kind of her. What’s your name?”

“Oliver. She says stop by tomorrow morning and she’ll give you some breakfast,” the boy said with a flash of white teeth.

“Thank you.” With an awkward nod, the boy fled down the hill at a run.

Rees sat down on a seat of fresh straw, his back to the wagon wheel looking upon the green valley before him. The road on which he’d arrived unwound like a silvery ribbon in the last rays of sunlight. The lowing of the cattle sounded from a nearby pasture and Bessie’s contented whicker floated out from the barn. Peaceful. Dolly would approve. He sighed. Eight years since Dolly’s death in 1787, six of them spent as a traveling weaver. Two years he struggled to keep his farm going without Dolly; two solid years. But he couldn’t do it without her. And since he made more money weaving than farming he’d offered the management of his land to his sister and her husband in exchange for raising his David with their own kids. He’d thought his eight- year old son would be safe with them while he worked. Sighing, he lifted off the napkin and dug into the stew.  For five years and more he’d gone home intermittently. Not often enough; he saw that now and he’d do his best to make it up to David.

When he tried to sleep, the rage he’d tamped down during the day flared up again, hotter and fiercer than before. He could just slap his sister!  He’d begun yearning to see David again after his experiences on the western frontier during the Rebellion two years previously, and as soon as winter ended he headed north.  Several profitable weaving commissions delayed him in Massachusetts so he arrived in Maine the summer of 1795, a year later than he expected, but he rode home with a strongbox almost too heavy to lift.

Caroline greeted him with hostile surprise. “We weren’t expecting to see you until winter,” she said.  She did not at first admit that David was gone. Instead she forced him to ask several increasingly agitated questions until he realized the truth. Then, when he exclaimed in furious disbelief,

“David’s gone? How could you allow that to happen?” She and her husband stood shoulder to shoulder and defied him.

“He’s a man grown,” Sam cried angrily. “We couldn’t stop him.”

“He’s fourteen,” Rees snapped.

“There’s nothing for him here,” Charles said. Rees glared at his oldest nephew as the boy added rudely, “Let him seek his fortune elsewhere.” Neither of his parents reprimanded the lad for his unmannerly behavior.

“He couldn’t wait to leave,” Caroline said sneeringly. He knew then that David was simply an inconvenience. He pressed them again and again until they were all shouting but all they would say was that they thought David went off with the Shakers.  Rees flung out of the house he and Dolly had shared and raced towards Durham, and the Shaker settlements near it.

More wacky English idioms

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English is a very creative language. It’s so creative the origins of some of our idioms are lost or at least difficult to trace.

‘Skeleton in the closet’ for one. Skeleton is an old word, 16th century at least, from German. It was coined in the UK in the early 1800’s. Skeleton in the closet is used in America; apparently in England it has undergone a change and is now a ‘skeleton in the cupboard’.

How about ‘air your dirty laundry’? Obviously from a time when people hung their laundry out to dry. But when? So far, haven’t found that date. This idiom is one I think of as from a woman’s experience since women have always been charged with doing the wash.

‘Baptism by fire’, another one of my mother’s favorite expressions. First mentioned in the Bible (Matthew 3:11) the OED lists its English use as beginning in 1822, as referencing a soldiers first experience in battle.

‘Pooh’, a more genteel expression than the one we use to day.  This is also from the 16th century, from the Scots, and it has taken on a variety of spellings and connotations.

As one would expect, a lot come from sports or activities related to sports. Having a ‘chip on one’s shoulder’ was actually a popular method of settling quarrels in the nineteenth century. A boy would place a chip on his shoulder and dare his opponent to knock it off. Carrying a ‘chip on one’s shoulder’ comes from the same thing. Really? This is how they settled quarrels?

‘Loaded for bear’, one I use all the time. From the 1880’s and was used to describe a player in a baseball game.  I would have expected it to be from hunting.

Most of the idioms seem to arise from male activities and male interests, but not all. Before it took on a perjorative connotation, spinster was a description of almost every woman; everybody but the richest woman spent significant time spinning for her family.  I commented in an earlier post about the loss of knowledge about weaving words. Coincidence? Well, a year or two ago Archaeology Magazine commented that some digs were now concentrating upon the world of women and slaves. I’ll just bet their view of the world was different from the men!

Our English language – new and old idioms

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English as a language has been around for centuries. We still enjoy Shakespeare’s plays and they’re from the mid-1500s. So it should be easy to write about 1796; we’re all speaking the same language, right?

Well, yes and no. English is a living language and as such keeps changing. Think about all the new terms that have arrived on the heels of the computer revolution. And there are changes in speech patterns too. My mother frequently decried the increasing informality of conversation and the use of nouns as verbs. Just think of ‘texting’ from text. Or “I must netflix that movie.”

Medical terms like ‘mastitis’, an inflammation in the breast, wasn’t used until the mid 1800’s.  And Rex, as a name for a dog. wasn’t used before about 1820. A writer, therefore, has to be careful not to add too many anachronisms to the manuscript. Sometimes, thought, it is necessary just for the sake of clarity.

What I think is surprising is the longevity of some of the idioms we still use. ‘Strike while the iron is hot’ is one common expression. No, it doesn’t mean your mother is going to whip out the iron. It is a blacksmithing expression. Iron was shaped while it was hot and pliable by pounding upon it. If you wanted to create something like a sword from an iron rod, it would need to be heated and pounded, over and over.

How about ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ ? This one is very old. It’s been traced back to Chaucer, although the sentence structure was different and of course the spelling to a modern eye is crazy: sleepyng at least is quickly apparent. By the late eighteen hundreds both spelling and structure were the same as they are now. That’s why we can still easily read a writer like Dickens. Another old term is ‘cracker’, a derogatory term used for southern whites by the British by the 1760’s. What is the origin? Still working on that.

Then there is ‘spinning in his grave?” So evocative. But it is relatively new. The first use I can find is ‘turn in his grave’, by Thackeray in 1848.

The term ‘ne’er do well’ just turned up in a lyric by the band Incubus. It is of course a contraction of ‘never do well’. According to a blog post from the UK, Ne’er has been used in that shortened form since the 13th century, notably in the North of England and in Scotland. ‘Ne’er do well’ itself originated in Scotland and an early citation of it in print is found in the Scottish poet and playwright Allan Ramsay’s A collection of Scots proverbs, 1737.

How about mind your Ps and Qs, one of my mother’s favorite expressions. No one seems to know the origin of this one so I will list a few possibilities:

1. Mind your pints and quarts. This is suggested as deriving from the practice of chalking up a tally of drinks in English pubs (on the slate). Publicans had to make sure to mark up the quart drinks as distinct from the pint drinks.

2. Advice to printers’ apprentices to avoid confusing the backward-facing metal type lowercase Ps and Qs, or the same advice to children who were learning to write.

3. Mind your pea (jacket) and queue (wig). Pea jackets were short rough woollen overcoats, commonly worn by sailors in the 18th century. Perruques were full wigs worn by fashionable gentlemen. It is difficult to imagine the need for an expression to warn people to avoid confusing them.

4. Mind your pieds (feet) and queues (wigs). This is suggested to have been an instruction given by French dancing masters to their charges. It seems doubtful this began as a French expression.

5.  Another version of the ‘advice to children’ origin has it that ‘Ps and Qs’ derives from ‘mind your pleases and thank-yous”. OK, this sounds somewhat plausible.

So no one really knows where this one comes from but it is old enough to have been used in 1795.

Other terms I’m still working on: ‘she rules the roost.” That sounds agricultural and therefore old. How about ‘tar with the same brush.” That sounds like it comes fromt he days of tarring and feathering but I don’t know for sure. Another one I am curious about is ‘heads will roll’. From the days of the French Revolution perhaps. Stay tuned and when I find the origins I will report.

Communes – and the Shakers

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The communal style of living which is now so much a part of our picture of the Shakers was actually not a part of their beliefs. When they moved to the Colonies, however, relocating around Albany, financial stresses compelled them to living in a communal setting

f you have begun thinking of tie-dye, put it out of your mind.

Their belief in the dual nature of God; a masculine half and a feminine half, led directly to the equality between the sexes. However, the celibacy that marked them from most of the other new faiths sprang directly from Ann Lee and her experiences in childbirth. She believed that all sin came from the sexual act between Adam and Eve and that only by overcoming fleshly desires could true salvation be attained. The sexes therefore were separated, living on separate sides of the Dwelling House. Personal property was abolished as well, all the property being held communally. New converts brought with them and gave to the order all of their worldly possessions. Even though they accepted anybody, including those who were penniless, the Church became quite wealthy.  Of course when the economy in the United States shifted from farming and handcrafts to factories, the Shakers couldn’t compete and their numbers began to dwindle. Celibacy was part of the problem. Once there were governmental agencies that cared for the poor and for the abandoned children and the number of converts declined, the number of Shakers diminished rapidly.

The Millenium Church, as they named themselves, was not a democracy. All decisions came from the top down. Obedience was a strict requirement.

However, they remain once of the most successful ‘communes’ ever established.

To dye for – Red

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Madder (rubia tinctorum) has been used for centuries as a red dye. It is well known as the dye for Turkey Red or, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the red coats for the British during the eighteenth century. Wild madder yields a subtler pinky brown. Unlike many natural dyes, madder contains natural mordanting agents and does not need to be mixed with iron or tin or other materials.

When Spain entered the New World, another source of red dye became available to Europe; cochineal. ((Cochineal was already known to and used by the Aztecs and the Maya people as well as the Incas and pre-Incas in Peru.) Insects similar to small beetles live on the cactus found at the higher altitudes in countries such as Peru. A visitor to Peru will see this grayish bloom on the cacti growing wild in the Sacred Valley. It looks like some form of fungi but is actually an insect colony. Cochineal is  the blood of the female of this species and dyes vibrant red, pink and purple. I have read that the Pope’s robes were dyed with cochineal. Without a proper mordant, cochineal is not colorfast.

Spain held a monopoly on cochineal for years, making the bright scarlet very much sought after and very expensive. It was the color of the rich and paintings from this era contain frequent splashes of red clothing, wherein the subjects demonstrate their wealth and high status. Similar to the use of Tyrian purple in earlier times. This dye was discovered in antiquity and traded by the Phoenicians. It is made from the shells of the common Mediterrean Sea Snail. It was both rare and expensive (the Phoenicians held on to their monopoly for years) and became the color of royalty. It has never been produced synthetically commercially. Efforts to transport the insects to Europe failed. They were transported successfully to Australia where they caused a whole new raft of problems.

Cochineal is still used as a dye and appears in both candy and lipstick. Think of that every time you put something red on or in your mouth.

To Dye for – Indigo

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Indigo is probably the most familiar dye in the world and has a long history of use. It is thought that India was the first place indigo dyeing began use of the dye quickly spread. From the Tuaregs in the Sahara to Cameroon, clothing dyed with indigo signified wealth.

In the United States, of course, indigo gave the characteristic blue to denim (although most of the dye now used is synthetic.) Woad also yields a blue dye (yes, the same woad used by the Celts) but it is not usually as deep a blue.  Asian indigo, Indigofera sumitrana, yields true indigo.

Indigo is not water soluable and so has to be treated to make it useable. One of the pre-industrial processes  was  soaking it in stale urine. Many accounts do not mention this particular fact but the pungency of the process is regularly described. The result is known as indigo white. Fabric dyed in the indigo white turns blue with oxidation. Indigo is also toxic so there is plenty of opportunity for indigo workers t become sick. And despite the processing, indigo fades slowly over time.

I saw items dyes with indigo in the highlands of Peru. The hanks of wool were all different colors from a light royal blue to such a deep blue it was almost navy.

During the Colonial period, there were indigo plantations in South Carolina. Three harvests, the last in early December, was the goal and contemporary accounts describe both the pungency of the smell and the toll the harvests took upon the slaves. Indigo was synthesized in the late 1890’s and within twenty years or so had almost completely replaced the natural substance.

Weaving Words

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Until the Industrial Revolution weaving, and the words associated with the equipment and materials, was probably as familiar to most people as the words we now use to describe our cars.Now most of the terms sound like a foreign language unless, of course, you are a hand weaver who loves the craft and still weaves in the traditional European manner. I clarify with European because a different style of weaving, still practiced in Peru and other such countries, employs the backstrap loom. Instead of a beam, the warp goes around the weaver’s back. Using memorized patterns, their fingers pick up the threads and press the weft through. (It is truly amazing to see their fingers blur as they pluck the threads, similar to watching a good guitar picker.)

However, the ‘weaver’s cross’ is still obvious and as my weaving teacher once told me there is no weaving without the cross.

Anyway, I would venture to guess that most people know maybe three or four words that pertain to weaving : warp, weft, shuttle and loom. I would also bet that there is some confusion in most people’s minds between warp and weft. (Just so we’re clear, warp is the the skeleton of fibers that runs from beam to beam in a loom. The weft is the fiber sent crossways through the warp on the shuttle.)  The loom, on the other hand, is not a static piece of equipment but has many pieces that work together to take two strands of fiber and make them into finished cloth.

A loom can be warped back to front or front to back so, depending upon the method, the steps would be slightly different. But the basic process is the same.

The warp is wound upon a warping board, a board or free standing rack with pegs. Ties are put at each end of the cross and then at each end of the warp at about one yard intervals. These ties are called choke ties; these are released once the warp is put on the loom. Long thin sticks called lease sticks are inserted on either side of the cross to hold it while the warp is wound around the rear apron rod. The warp is spread and the fibers are brought forward and threaded through the heddles. These are slim metal pieces that hang down from on rod on the castle. Each heddle has an eye and each thread must be pulled through a heddle. Then the strands are pulled through another piece that slips into the loom, a piece that resembles a comb although closed on both sides, and is called a reed. This step is called sleying the reed, I am not sure why. The reeds have slits of varying thicknesses depending upon thickness of the threads: cotton, linen, wool or silk, that is drawn through them and how closely woven you want the cloth to be.  Each handful of finished strands are knotted loosely to keep them tidy. When all the warp is finished, it is tied to the front beam.

Confused yet? Every loom has a certain number of  shafts from 2 on up. The more sheds, the more complicated a pattern can be woven. What is a shed you ask? The framework that holds the heddles. The space between the upper and lower warp is call a shaft and it is through this space that a shuttle goes. The treadles, foot pedals on the floor, are attached to the bar that connects these shafts. Stepping on the treadles raises and lowers different shafts, different warp threads in other words, and it is this interaction that creates a pattern.

At its most basic, stepping on a treadle lifts a certain number of threads. The shuttle with the weft thread passes through to the other side. Then you push a piece of the framework called the beater that pushes the weft tight. Step on another treadle, lift another set of threads, and pass the shuttle back to the first side.

Problems can arise at any point. Your warp threads can break. The tension of your warp may not be even. You may have missed threading a strand through a heddle or the reed.

Sounds complicated doesn’t it? And it is. Another quote from my weaving teacher: weaving is a process of constant problem solving. Although looms are now mechanized, this basic design: the cross, the sheds, the shuttle has not changed. The big difference is that a hand weaver, such as Rees, would use his feet to raise and lower the sheds and it would take him a lot longer to finish several yards of cloth.

A traveling weaver, such as Rees, would have to reassemble his loom at every stop, make a warp and put it on the loom, thread the heddles and so on before he even began weaving. Then the loom would have to be disassembled at the end of his job. No wonder weavers were considered skilled craftsmen and completed an apprenticeship of several years.

As complex and labor intensive as this process seems, a weaver was still able to keep 9 to 11 spinners busy.