Textiles are cloth—especially woven or knitted—or the fibers, filaments, and yarns used to make it. Through necessity and creativity, textile production has taken many forms throughout American history.

On the frontier, deerskins sometimes substituted for cloth, and settlers occasionally traded animal furs for needed textiles. Such alternatives were limited, however. To meet most of their needs, settlers planted fiber crops such as flax and hemp as soon as farmland could be cleared. They later brought in sheep for wool. Most families possessed the knowledge and skills needed to make the tools and perform the tasks required to turn these raw materials into clothing, bedcovers, ropes, cords, and other textiles.

The Industrial Revolution began with a series of advances in textile technology, most of them in England. The process started with the invention of the fly shuttle in 1733 and continued with Richard Arkwright’s successful spinning machine, patented in 1767; the spinning mule in 1779; the power loom in 1785; and a wool-combing machine in 1789. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, invented in 1793, helped make large-scale cotton production possible by greatly increasing the efficiency of separating cotton fibers from their seeds.

In 1800, about 90 percent of Americans were subsistence farmers who produced most of what they needed and sold their surplus. This included the fibers used to make textiles. Nationally, cotton was the most important fiber for commercial factory production, but it was not widely grown in Western Virginia. Here, flax, hemp, and sheep’s wool were the primary materials used for clothing, household linens, and farm items such as feed sacks.

 Spinning

Turning raw fiber into thread, string, twine, or yarn required drawing the fibers into strands of even thickness and twisting them together to give them strength. This process is called spinning, but several steps were required before spinning could begin.

After sheep were sheared each spring, their wool had to be processed, a job historically performed largely by women and children. Most wool was first scoured, or cleaned, but some was processed in its raw state. Autumn was a good time to dye wool because plants used for natural dyes were available and the weather remained suitable for outdoor work. Winter provided more time for indoor tasks such as carding, or brushing, the fibers to align them, and combing, which removed remaining debris and further straightened the fibers.

Flax and hemp required more strenuous preparation, and men played a larger role in these tasks, beginning with plowing, planting, and harvesting. The fibers then went through several stages: 

·       Retting: softening the fibers

·       Rippling: removing seed pods

·       Winnowing: separating out the seeds

·       Breaking: crushing the hard outer core

·       Scotching: separating useful fibers from the hard outer shell

·       Hackling: straightening the fibers for spinning

These backbreaking tasks required sharp and potentially dangerous tools. Older boys often assisted their fathers, passing skills and traditions from one generation to the next.

Most spinning and plying, or twisting yarn together, took place during the winter, although the work could be done whenever there was spare time. Grandmothers often did much of the spinning because they had fewer responsibilities on the farm.

Nearly every family in Western Virginia owned a large hand-powered spinning wheel. These wheels were known by several names, including great wheel, wool wheel, and walking wheel. An average woodworker could build one using relatively simple tools. The spinner turned the wheel while simultaneously drafting, or guiding, the fiber through an orifice on the wheel. The finished yarn was then wound onto a pointed spindle at the end of the wheel.

These large wheels worked best with short fibers and were not suitable for longer fibers, known as line, needed to make linen. Long plant fibers, such as hemp, could also be called linen if they met legal requirements for fineness. Finer grades of hemp could be used for men’s work shirts, but most hemp was made into sturdier items such as wagon covers, tarps, and sails because it withstood weather better than flax.

Line fibers were spun on smaller treadle wheels, commonly called flax wheels, although these wheels could also be used to spin wool. They were considerably more complex than great wheels and were made by experienced wheelwrights and cabinetmakers.

Weaving

Once the yarn was spun, it could be woven into cloth. A commonly repeated rule held that seven people carding wool were needed to keep one spinner busy, while seven spinners were needed to keep one weaver supplied with yarn.

Wide fabrics were woven on large wooden floor looms known as barn looms, which required considerable skill to operate. Historian Joseph Doddridge wrote that in pioneer times, “Almost every house contained a loom and almost every woman was a weaver” (see sidebar). Smaller box looms and knee looms, sometimes called tape or band looms, produced the many yards of woven tape and ribbon needed for everyday tasks. Textile scholar Ellen Gehret wrote, “The small tape looms were most often used by children and the elderly.”

The final step was washing the finished cloth. Wool often underwent an additional process called fulling, which shrank and thickened the fibers and produced a firmer fabric.

Fabric

One common early fabric combined linen and wool. Known as linsey-woolsey, it used linen for the warp, or lengthwise threads, and wool for the weft, or crosswise threads. The resulting cloth was sturdy and warm and was used for men’s breeches, coats, and waistcoats; women’s skirts; and other cold-weather clothing.

For everyday work clothing, coarse men’s breeches and shirts could be made from flax tow, the shorter fibers left over from processing flax, or from hemp linen. These materials were more durable than fine flax. Fine flax linen, meanwhile, was reserved for shirts and other clothing worn on special occasions or by people who did not perform heavy manual labor. Wool was especially useful for women’s skirts because it tended to self-extinguish when exposed to flame, an important safety consideration for women who cooked over open fireplaces.

Most people owned at least one set of special-occasion clothing made from finer materials. In 1788, John Reger of Buckhannon reportedly walked more than 150 miles to Winchester to purchase a “store bought” dress for his bride, Elizabeth West.

Homemade special-occasion clothing was carefully made and expected to last for decades, and many garments did. The availability of inexpensive machine-made cloth eventually changed both clothing production and fashion. Once machine-woven cotton became affordable by the mid-1800s, women’s fashions took advantage of the abundant material, producing billowing skirts made from yards of cotton worn over cotton petticoats.

The term “slave cloth” is sometimes used for fabric made from flax tow. Because the fibers were too coarse to qualify as fine linen, the resulting cloth was rough and scratchy until softened through use and repeated washing. It could be woven as a plain weave for shirts or as a twill, similar to denim, for men’s trousers. In some areas, enslaved people wore coarse wool during the winter and slept under wool blankets.

At his plantations, Thomas Jefferson had enslaved people produce as much of this cloth as possible for clothing and household linens. This was primarily a form of plantation self-sufficiency rather than a commercial enterprise. Jefferson promoted the practice to other large enslavers as a way to increase the productivity of enslaved people who were too young or too infirm for field labor. Production initially relied on traditional spinning wheels, but Jefferson later turned to mechanization. In 1808–09, he established a textile house at Monticello to increase production and sent skilled weavers to his other plantations.

George Washington maintained a similar textile operation at Mount Vernon. He planted flax and kept a flock of between 600 and 800 sheep. He also experimented with dogbane, sometimes called Indian hemp, as a fiber but found it impractical. Today, Mount Vernon’s spinning house is open for tours and offers demonstrations and workshops in spinning, weaving, and natural dyeing.

The enormous amount of labor required to produce textiles was one reason the Industrial Revolution began with inventions designed to mechanize and speed up textile production. As machine-made fabrics became available, families adopted them when they could afford them. 

Plain cotton fabrics and woolen tweeds, twills, and melton cloth were imported from England soon after the Revolutionary War. It did not take long, however, for the United States to establish its own textile mills. By 1810, Berkeley County had a significant commercial textile industry that continued well into the 20th century. The transition from household textile production to factory-made cloth gradually transformed how Americans produced, purchased, and wore clothing.

This article is part of By the People Conversations Beyond 250, a series of community-driven programs created by humanities councils in collaboration with local partners. The 
initiative was developed by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and the 
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.