LIBERTY’S DAUGHTERS: WOMEN, TEXTILES, AND THE NONIMPORTATION MOVEMENT IN REVOLUTIONARY CONNECTICUT: A VIRTUAL EXHIBIT
Curated by Peggy Church and Jamie Eves
Sponsored by the Windham Textile & History Museum. Co-sponsored by Windham Preservation, Inc. Funded by a Grant from Connecticut Humanities.
Download the above 2′ x 3′ exhibit display board as a pdf.
DEMONSTRATION
Weavers Peggy Church (right) and Susan Bruno (left) knit string heddles for an 18th-century barn loom. In modern looms, the heddles are made from stiff steel wires, with eyelets to hold the warp threads. In Revolutionary Era looms, however, heddles were “knitted” by hand from string, with loops tied in them to guide the warp threads. Knitting heddles was laborious, exacting, and time-consuming, and the finished heddles required greater skill to use.
ARTIFACT: ASSEMBLING AN 18TH-CENTURY BARN LOOM
As part of the exhibit, Mill Museum staff and volunteers reassembled an 18th-century barn loom that the Museum had maintained in storage for many years. Some pieces were discovered to be missing, and so replacement parts were constructed. The “new wood look” on the replacement parts was retained, to make it obvious that they were not original. Once the loom was reassembled, the team added a vintage reed, knitted string heddles, warped the loom, and began weaving cloth on it. The restoration process is illustrated in the slide show below.
The following document was found in the Museum’s files. “The loom was made in southern Dalarna in Sweden 1717 by a local carpenter with the initials AS. The first owners ar[e] unknown. About 1840 it was owned by a family Dehlgren in a town named Sala in Vasfermanland. It was a welthy [sic] family with interests in corn, lumber and charcoal. The wife was daughter to a french blacksmith who was invited to the mine town Sala. Among the children they had a dauter [sic] named Anna Fredrika (1845-1894). She met, fell in love and run away with a traveling teatcher [sic] named Jakob Petrus Rentstrom (1846-1927)[.] They married 1864 and imediatly [sic] got skolded [sic] by her father. They setled [sic] down 1872 in Billingsfors, Dalsland, When the father died 1873 Anna was accepted in the family again and got this loom among other things. Anna and Jakob got 10 children, number eight was Fredrik Feofil (1880-1967), also a teacher. He married Edit Lovgren (1882-1955). They setled [sic] down in Frollhaltan, Vastergotland and married 1902. One of Fredriks [sic] sisters Sofia lived with the family for a couple of years and she brought the loom with her. When she left she put it in the attic, where I found it 1974, when the children of Edit and Fredrik devided [sic] the home. Number four of the six children is my mother Astrid.”
REENACTMENT: PATRIOT SPINNING BEE
Volunteer spinners reenacted a Revolutionary patriot spinning bee on the Windham town green. On a warm, breezy, sunny August 2024 morning, a number of volunteer spinners brought their wheels and gathered on the town green in Windham, CT, to make homespun yarn. Although there is no direct evidence that patriot women organized such a bee in the Revolutionary era, it is likely that they did. It is known that patriot men held protests on the Windham green, including hanging an effigy of a stamp tax collector from a “liberty tree.” Windham Village (now known as Windham Center) was a center for patriot activity in northeastern Connecticut. It was the county seat of Windham County and site site of the county courthouse. Among the village’s residents were a several prominent patriot leaders and lawyers, including Eliphalet Dyer (a delegate to both the Stamp Act Congress and the Continental Congress) and Jedidiah Elderkin (an advisor to Governor Jonathan Trumbull). Samuel Huntington (also a delegate to the Continental Congress) grew up in Windham. Their wives would also have been ardent patriots.
DEMONSTRATIONS
Throughout the exhibit, crafters, artists, and historians presented live demonstrations about various aspects of Revolutionary Era textile production. Ann Galonska from the Mansfield, CT, Historical Society (left) spoke about the history of silk production in Mansfield, Windham, and neighboring communities. Her presentation included live silkworms, unwinding cocoons, and winding silk on a preindustrial winder, with the assistance of Peggy Church. Galonska also filled two display cases with memorabilia about sericulture in Mansfield. An important point is that, at the time of the Revolution, Connecticut farmers were raising silk worms and producing silk thread. Connecticut colony seemed poised to enter the global silk market, if only Britain’s restrictive mercantilist laws could be circumvented, a factor that underlay debates about nonimportation. Other speakers demonstrated spinning flax on a linen wheel, spinning on a great wheel, rug hooking, spinning wool, and lace-making, all with corresponding exhibit materials.The demonstrations and talks made it clear: homespun was a key part of the Connecticut economy, and women’s labor and skill were central to its production.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Dayton, Cornelia Hughes. Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1630-1789.
- Lacey, Barbara E. The World of Hannah Heaton: The Autobiography of an Eighteenth-Century Connecticut Farm Woman. (1988)
- Lacey, Barbara E. “Women in the Era of the American Revolution: The Case of Norwich, Connecticut.” The New England Quarterly. Dec. 1980. Vol. 53, no. 4.
- Larned, Ellen D. History of Windham County, Connecticut. Vol. 2. (1880)
- Norton, Mary Beth. Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800. (1980)
- Sturges, Mark. “Fleecing Connecticut: David Humphreys and the Poetics of Sheep Farming.” The New England Quarterly. Sep. 2014. Vol. 87, no. 3.
- Trunzo, Jennifer M. Cantu. “Buying Out to Buy In: Ceramic Consumption on the Home Front During the American Revolution.” Historical Archaeology. 2012. Vol. 46, no. 2.
- Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. (2001)
