a white holland cap or wig, and beaver hat: and on Thanksgiving days, and other high occasions, a white holland shirt and cambric neckcloth.

"The women have been, till within about thirty years past, clothed altogether in the same style, with a moderate allowance for the taste of sex. A minute description will not be attempted; a few particulars will characterize the whole. They wore home-made drugget, crape, plain cloth and camblet gowns in the winter, and the exterior of their under dress was a garment lined and quilted, extending from the waist to the feet. Their shoes were high-heeled, made of tanned calf-skin, and in some instances of cloth. In the summer they wore striped linen and calico gowns, cloth shoes and linen underdress: and every young lady when she had attained her stature, was furnished with a silk gown and skirt if her parents were able, or she could purchase them by dint of labour. Their head dress has always occupied a great share of their attention while in youth; it has always been varying, and every mode seems, in its day, the most becoming. Within the period just mentioned, the elderly women have worn check holland aprons to meeting on the Sabbath, and those of early life, and of the best fashion, were accustomed to wear them in their formal visits. "1

The Organization of the Household Industries.

The production in the household of woolen and linen, and to some extent also cotton fabrics, not only clothing but also the necessary house furnishings, such as sheeting, toweling, blankets, and table linen, and even such coarse fabrics as rag carpets and grain bags, was a well-organized industry. The various successive stages in the conversion of the raw materials into the finished product were regularly assigned to members of the family according to their strength and skill. Thus the men sheared and washed the wool, and performed most of the laborious processes of breaking, swingling and hackling the flax to prepare the fiber for spinning. The carding of the wool, corresponding in a way to these processes, was for years the task assigned to the older members of the family whose strength and eyesight would have been unequal to more onerous and careful work. About the year 1800, however, the household was relieved of this task by the introduction of the water-power carding machines, which, as we have seen, spread so rapidly that they were to be found in almost every village in 1810.2 The younger women of the family

1 Printed in Noah Porter's Historical Discourse. Appendix, Note S, pp. 82-83. 2 Supra p. 260.

spun the fibers thus prepared into yarn and thread on the large and small wheels then found in every farmhouse. Bleaching and dyeing were also a part of the multifarious activities of these women. In the latter process almost all the materials used, such as pokeberries, madder, goldenrod, the bark of the hickory, butternut and sassafras trees, and various flowers, could be found in the woods and fields. For producing the deep blue which was so popular, indigo must be imported, and this was one of the few standard commodities sold at the stores and by itinerant peddlers.

Weaving, the next stage in the production of homespun cloth, was not so uniformly performed in every household. Looms were, however, to be found in every house of considerable size, and many houses had a room, or an ell, especially devoted to these ponderous and noisy machines. Gallatin wrote in 1810: "Every farmer's house is provided with one or more wheels, according to the number of females. Every second house, at least has a loom for weaving linen, cotton, and coarse woolen cloths, which is almost wholly done by women. It is probable that a considerable share of this work was taken over by men, some of whom may have carried it on as a regular trade.2 There were often many smaller looms in the house

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1 Report on Manufactures. 1810. p. 435. The note from which this quotation is taken refers to household manufactures in New Hampshire. It is interesting to compare in this regard the figures given by a writer in the Massachusetts Historical Society's Collections, II. 7:70, for Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. He found 5,490 looms, in a population of 49,282 (about 9,000 families) in 1810. According to Coxe, Digest of Manufactures, 1812, p. 667, in the back-country of Pennsylvania there was in one county, McKean, only one loom among a population of 142 persons. In three other counties the proportion was one to every 20 or 30 of population. The spinning wheels were much more numerous, averaging about one to a family.

2 Miss Earle says, Home Life, pp. 212-213: "Every farmer's daughter knew how to weave as well as to spin, yet it was not recognized as wholly woman's work as was spinning; for there was a trade of hand-weaving for men, to which they were apprenticed. Every town had professional weavers. They were a universally respected class, and became the ancestors of many of the wealthiest and most influential citizens today. They took in yarn and thread to weave on their looms at their own homes at so much a yard; wove their own yarn into stuffs to sell; had apprentices to their trade; and also went out working by the day at their neighbors' houses, sometimes carrying their looms many miles with them." Miss Earle cites no authorities; the lists of tradesmen given in the statistical accounts of various towns in Connecticut make no mention of weavers, and the only confirmation I have been able to find of her statement is an entry in the account book of Rev. Medad Rogers of New Fairfield, Conn., of money paid out for weaving. See infra, pp. 366-367.

on which the women made garters, points, glove-ties, hair-laces, stay-laces, shoe-strings, hat-bands, belts and breeches-suspenders, often called "galluses." The production of these odds and ends of apparel shows in a striking manner the extent to which the household was self-sufficient in its supply of clothing. Knitting was an important branch of the domestic textile industry, producing the hosiery, mittens, shawls, comforters, etc., for all the family. It must be remembered that the foregoing discussion applies only to the conditions prevailing in inland towns. In the seaports and larger river towns, the inhabitants had long used clothing and household furniture of foreign manufacture.

The Building and Furnishing of Farmhouses.

In the furnishings of their homes, the inland farmers relied to a very limited extent on exchange with the world outside their immediate vicinity, and in fact supplied their wants, as in the matter of food and clothing, largely by the exertions of their own families. In the construction of their houses, those story-and-a-half structures with long sloping roofs which one may still occasionally see in the more isolated country regions, they utilized the timber growing in the vicinity, often on their own land, and employed as workmen those of their neighbors who carried on the carpenter's trade as a by-industry of farming. Only a small amount of hardware was used and most of this, such as bolts and hinges, was made by the local blacksmith. The nails, which were used much more sparingly than now, were often made by the farmers themselves from nail rods purchased either from the local store or from a nearby slitting-mill.3 Glass, which had

1 Earle, Op. cit., p. 225. A detailed description of the technical processes of hand-weaving as carried on in those days is contained in Chapter X of that work, pp. 212-251. Other chapters which have been consulted are Chapters VIII and IX, pp. 167-211, describing the cultivation and preparation of the flax and woolen fibers.

2 Supra p. 262 ff. The task of raising the heavy beams which constituted the frame of the structure into position was accomplished by the united efforts of a large number of neighbors. This is another example of the coöperation of inland farmers for the accomplishment of a task now undertaken by specialized workmen, and, like the husking-bee, was utilized as an occasion for social intercourse and amusement.

Supra p. 270. Coxe says: "Nailmaking is frequently a household business in New England, a small anvil being found no inconvenience in the corner of a farmer's chimney." View of the United States, p. 269. In another place he estimates the quantity of nails used by an average household in building and repairing at ten pounds per annum. Ibid. p. 144.

probably in all except the newest settlements replaced the wooden shutters and oiled paper of earlier times, was practically the only material brought from any distance. The furniture, such as bedsteads, chairs, settles, and tables, could easily be produced by the local cabinet-maker, or even by a skilful carpenter. Besides making the homespun sheets and blankets, quilts and comforters, the women of the family made mattresses and pillows stuffed with the feathers of home-raised geese. An inventory of table-ware and kitchen utensils brings to light only a few "boughten" articles and these were carefully treasured and handed down from parents to children. Wood was the material most used, in fact wherever possible; of it were made trenchers, drinking-cups and tankards, and even spoons. Pewter was also used for these articles to some extent; but china, porcelain, glass or silverware were rarely seen. In the kitchen, wooden and earthenware vessels predominated, pots of iron, brass or copper being comparatively rare.2

In his Statistical Account of Middlesex County (Conn.), Field states that not only clothing and furniture but also agricultural implements were, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, made by the farmers for themselves.3 Wood was here again the principal material employed. The tools used by a farmer in Concord, New Hampshire, are thus described: "His plows were mainly of wood, the soles and coulters only being of iron, though the mould-boards were usually plated with sheets of that metal.

"The village blacksmith made his nails, his axes, his chains, as also his clumsy pitchforks, and flat-tined manure forks.

His

1 Woman's work, it would seem, was truly endless at this time. Besides the tasks already enumerated, and such by-industries as the making of soap and candles, they often had the care of poultry or bees, milked cows and did light outdoor work, such as weeding gardens and gathering fruit and vegetables. Combined with the bearing and rearing of large families of children, these unremitting labors shortened the duration of life of the sex very considerably. In frontier settlements extreme illustrations of this fact, were found, such as that cited by Kendall, Travels, III. 130. Near Bath, Maine, he saw a burying-ground in which were the graves of ten married women, eight of whom had died between the ages of twentytwo and thirty years. The "consumption" to which he attributes their early deaths, was, if it existed, no doubt brought on by overwork.

2 See Earle, Home Life, Chs. III. and IV. Bishop, American Manufactures, I. 488, remarks upon the scarcity of iron utensils at this time. Iron pots, not generally more than one or two, were considered sufficiently valuable to be included in the inventories of estates.

3 Op. cit., p. 17.

carts and sleds were generally constructed on the farm and ironed by the blacksmith, the wheels of the former having felloes three inches wide, tired with short strips of flat iron. His shovels were mainly of wood, having blades pointed with iron. His harrows, made often of a forked tree, had teeth sometimes of wood and sometimes of iron. 991

The Versatility and Ingenuity of Yankee Farmers.

Besides these standard by-industries of the farmer, there were a diversity of other tasks to which he applied himself more or less regularly according to his especial "bent" and opportunities. On the seacoast, as we have seen, he was frequently a sailor or a fisherman for part of the year.2 In inland towns he often plied some trade or other and was classed as an artisan as well as a farmer. Every farmer did a multitude of odd jobs for himself, such as repairing old buildings and building new, laying walls and stoning up wells, butchering pigs and cattle, making axe-handles and brooms, splitting staves and shingles, tanning leather and cobbling shoes. Occasionally he performed some of these tasks for a neighbor, who either had not the requisite skill or was too busy with strictly agricultural operations. Such service was probably more often repaid in kind than in currency. In this way the Yankee farmer acquired a reputation for ingenuity and a moderate ability in a variety of occupations, which has now become proverbial. His ability as a Jack-of-all-trades was not due to any exceptional endowment of versatility. It was distinctly a product of the economic environment and of the persistent endeavors

1 Walker, J. B. The Farm of the First Minister. Reprinted from Report of New Hampshire State Board of Agriculture, 1894. Concord, N. H., 1895, p. 18. The importance of wood in the economy of the inland farmer needs no emphasis. It was early recognized by Belknap who devotes a chapter, Ch.VIII., in the third volume of his History of New Hampshire, to an enumeration of the varieties of trees native in that state and discusses the peculiar uses of each.

Chastellux says: "The seaman when on shore immediately applies himself to some handicraft occupation, or to husbandry, and is always ready at a moment's notice to accompany the captain his neighbor, who is likewise frequently a mechanic, to the fisheries." Travels, II. 250.

3 This quality of ingenuity was recognized by Chancellor Livingston. He says of the farmer of the Northern states: "He can mend his plough, erect his walls, thrash his corn, handle his axe, his hoe, his sithe, his saw, break a colt, or drive a team, with equal address; being habituated from early life to rely on himself he acquires a skill in every branch of his profession, which is unknown in countries where labor is more subdivided." American Agriculture, p. 338.