The gender division of labor in the production of textiles in eighteenth-century, rural Pennsylvania (rethinking the New England model).

everything that went with them including several servant weavers.

77. Gervase Markham, The English Housewife, Michael R. Best, ed. (Kingston and Montreal, 1986), p. 152.

78. Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1919, reprint, London, 1982), pp. 103-04, outlines the various British regulations prohibiting women from weaving. That these regulations were effective is corroborated by the research of Lorna Wetherill using seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century probate data in "A Possession of One's Own: Women and Consumer Behavior in England, 1660-1740," Journal of British Studies 25 (April 1986): 145 and 148. John Rule, "The Frontier of Skill: Artisan Defences in the The role of textiles as one of the driving forces of British industrialization has been well studied. Scholars have examined the cotton, woolen and linen branches of the industry, regional variation, details of new technology, and the impact of mechanization on handloom weavers.(1) What has not been so well analyzed is the American experience. Here the research emphasis has been on the transition to industrialization during the post colonial years using New England as a model for the period leading up to this change.(2) The general acceptance of this model has inhibited new investigations into early American textile production with the result that crucial pieces of the industrialization puzzle are missing.

This essay examines the gender division of labor in domestic cloth manufacture in eighteenth-century, rural Pennsylvania to challenge the broad application of the New England experience. It demonstrates that factors other than technology influenced the structure of the textile sector and that there were distinct regional and temporal differences in how the work was organized. These nuances must be recognized before we can appreciate fully the nature and dynamics of industrialization. They are also essential to our understanding of domestic production in early America and the impact of mechanization on local communities.

The studies that do explore the American textile industry were produced by business, economic and labor historians and appeared in two waves, the first, during the early decades of this century and the second, in the last twenty years. The early group was composed of scholars who either sought to understand the evolving mechanization that underlay industrial development, or to shed light on the daily activities of early Americans, particularly women. Writers like William Bagnall, Perry Walton and Arthur Cole concentrated their intellectual efforts on describing the technological history of textile manufacture as it developed in the United States.(3) Rolla Tryon and Victor Clark looked more broadly at all industries, but concentrated substantial portions of their work on cloth production.(4) Less concerned with technology, Alice Morse Earle, Elizabeth Buel and Carl Holliday focused on domestic life and Edith Abbott wrote about women in industry.(5)

The New England Model

It is the interpretations contained in these works, particularly Tryon, Abbott and Earle, that have permeated our subsequent understanding of domestic textile manufacture in the colonial period. Broadly speaking, they suggested that until the advent of technological change in the late eighteenth century, one could look at hand cloth manufacture at any time, or in any region, and find a similar situation. Using New England as the representative example they argued that early American, rural women made some or all of the cloth required by their largely self-sufficient households. This characterization has had a major impact on our understanding of American industrialization and continues to do so as demonstrated by the second wave of scholarly investigation into the topic.

Drawing on the observations contained in these works recent American historians have concentrated their analyses on the period of the transformation from domestic to factory textile production in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Topics have focused on the impact of changing technology on workers, the importance of immigrant labor, alterations in social relations and the recruitment of a viable work force.(6) In addition, there has been an increasing focus on the declining status of women as spinning and weaving moved out of the home and into the factory. This latter interpretation relies heavily on the New England model of the earlier generation of historians.(7)

Unfortunately, however, there have been almost no new investigations of American textile manufacture for the period preceding and leading up to these decades of change that reflect the concerns of social history or draw on the new methodologies available to historians.(8) As a result, our understanding remains little altered from the interpretation in Rolla Tryon's seminal work, written in 1917, Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640-1860. More particularly, historians have overlooked several important aspects of early American domestic cloth production: that it grew out of European craft traditions; that spinning and weaving are distinct processes often done by different people; and that there were regional variations in the structure of the craft. The analysis of eighteenth-century, rural Pennsylvanian cloth manufacture that follows shows that the typicality of New England must be reassessed and the difference factored in to our understanding of the consequences of industrialization on American society.

The Need for Re-evaluation

Although colonial historians have not thoroughly reexamined eighteenth-century textile manufacture, recent micro studies suggest that it was a far more complex system than previously thought. Drawing on detailed information contained in the journal of Maine midwife, Martha Ballard, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich argued that in late eighteenth-century New England, weaving and spinning were an integral part of the informal female economy of neighborly exchange and reciprocity. Many households had looms, even more had spinning wheels and young women wove most productively before they were married. That was when a loom might be acquired and daughters would learn to make cloth for their parents, or possibly their own, future families. They might also weave for neighbors in exchange for payment of some kind.(9) This part of Ulrich's argument matches the pervasive interpretation of colonial cloth production: that early American, rural women made much of the cloth required by their families.

But as Ulrich moved back in time, to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, she found that cloth making in New England looked quite different. Fewer households had looms, and textile production seemed to belong to an artisan tradition that divided the work along gender lines, with females doing the spinning and skilled male craftsmen responsible for weaving and finishing the cloth.(10) Thus it would seem that the traditional model is not fully applicable even to New England.

Further challenge to the prevalent concept that women wove their household textiles can be found in Jean Russo's examination of the rural Chesapeake economy in the first half of the eighteenth century. Her study of Talbot County, Maryland, demonstrates that contrary to traditional interpretations, specialized craftsmen were firmly rooted in the community and played an integral part in an economy based on a system of local exchange of goods and services.(11) Weavers comprised approximately 7 percent of all artisans from 1690 to 1760 and despite a decline of members in many crafts, the number of cloth makers remained comparatively stable over the period.(12)

Ulrich's and Russo's analyses suggest that in the earlier decades of the settlement of New England and the Chesapeake cloth production was done by skilled male artisans. At some point in New England the gender division of labor changed; more work must be done on the second half of the eighteenth century in the Chesapeake to determine what occurred there. But how do the middle colonies compare?

Pennsylvania as a Test

Pennsylvania's craft traditions have not been studied in the same depth as those of New England, but because its agricultural base and early settlement are so different, it is important to do so in order to test the applicability of the New England model. Not only was this middle colony settled later, but its early immigrants also came from more diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds and established different settlement patterns than their northern counterparts. Moreover, Chester County, which is the focus of this study, has an excellent documentary base with which to explore issues of artisan production.

Chester County

My analysis is drawn from a sampling of 825 of the 5,500 Chester County probate records between 1714 and 1809 that included all records for each of five periods (1715-1718; 1734-1737; 1754-1757; 1773-1776; and 1792-1795); it is further supplemented by a data base of 115 probated loom owners. When combined with available tax list data (beginning with the earliest comprehensive list of 1765) and augmented with evidence in account books, newspapers and court records one can obtain a more complete picture of cloth production than hitherto possible. What we see is a strong European influence on the structure of the local cloth making sector. Artisans combined their craft work with farming, experienced a life cycle similar to their European counterparts, divided the work along gender lines, and relied on an extended labor force. The major change over the period was not in the gender division of tasks as it appears to be in New England, but a shift from the use of bound labor to free wage workers as the latter proliferated in numbers.

Ethnicity

The earliest immigrants came to Pennsylvania from England, Wales, Ireland (Scots-Irish) and Germany. Throughout the eighteenth century, the English dominated the Chester County landscape, comprising approximately two-thirds of the population. In the first decades of settlement the Welsh were the next most populous group, but their numbers declined over the century, while the Scotch-Irish/Irish population grew; the Germans were never a proportionately large group, though they steadily increased.

The county maintained this heterogeneity throughout the eighteenth century in addition to remaining predominantly rural.(13) Similar ratios are reflected in the ethnicity of the probated loom owners, with no indications that one group was more likely to engage in cloth production than another in numbers disproportionate to their population base.(14)

All areas from which the initial settlers originated specialized in some form of cloth production. In England and Wales, although the scale and organization of the industry varied regionally, many rural inhabitants were involved in wool cloth making for a large national and international market. Most of these artisans combined their craft with some other form of income-generating activity; they either farmed their own land or hired themselves out to do agricultural work for others.(15) The Scots-Irish and German immigrants came primarily from rural areas specializing in linen weaving and they, too, were accustomed to combine their craft skills with some form of agrarian income.(16) This tradition persisted in Pennsylvania; the majority of households that owned looms were also involved in agriculture.(17) Despite the ethnic diversity and the different skills and equipment required to process wool and linen, many of the artisans living in eighteenth-century Chester County quickly reproduced and continued to utilize the system of bi-occupational employment with which they had been familiar in the Old World.(18)

Table 1A
Proportions of National Groups in Chester County(*)

        English    Scots-Irish    Welsh    German    Other    Total Population
Date       %            %           %         %        %             (#)

1730      67           12          17         2        2           10,800
1759      59           23           8         5        5           27,000
1782      63           19           7         8        4           34,450

* SOURCE: James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man's Country, A Geographical Study of
Early South-Eastern Pennsylvania, (New York, 1972), p. 79, table 14.

TABULAR DATA OMITTED

Spinning as Women's Work

Europeans not only combined craft work and farming, they frequently divided the tasks involved in textile production along gender lines. Spun yarn is the raw material required to weave a piece of cloth and its manufacture was primarily women's work, a fact that did not alter with the transatlantic migrations to Pennsylvania.(19) It is clear from a variety of sources that spinning formed a major component of what Laurel Ulrich calls the "female economy," and in Pennsylvania this operated on two levels: some yarn was produced for home consumption only and some was made for commercial purposes. In general, women owned their own spinning wheels, gave them to other females and purchased them. Many received training to acquire the skill, sometimes through formal arrangements, after which they would spin for their own use and/or for wages, regardless of their marital status.

In 1718, almost 30 percent of decedent Chester County households had at least 1 spinning wheel and this number grew steadily throughout the century so that by 1795, 65 percent had one. Female spinning wheel owners mirrored this trend. Although no women were recorded as having wheels in 1718, by 1795 more than 50 percent of female decedents had them.(20) They acquired the tools in a variety of ways. Frequently, husbands bequeathed the household spinning wheels to their wives, either because the women owned them prior to marriage as in the case of Margaret Boyd whose husband, in his 1754 will, gave her "her Little Wheel She brought," or because they had used them during their life together and continued to need them.(21) Some men like Samuel Maxfield, who died in 1774, left his daughters the spinning wheels which had been theirs while he lived.(22)

Women also specified in their wills that their spinning equipment be given to other females. Some, like Mary Sharp of Easttown, kept it within their families by leaving her "grand Children Viz Rachel and Mary the Children of my son Thomas my wooll and flax wheel and Reel . . ." in 1779.(23) Others, like Jean Simontown of Tredyffrin, left in 1794, "to |her~ Negroe woman Betty and to |her~ Negroe Woman Dinah each a Spinning wheel and the Reel & Big Wheel between them."(24)

Another way for women to obtain yarn making equipment was to purchase it for themselves. Several vendue lists that delineate property sold from decedent estates show, for example, that in 1752 Jane Power bought flax, a flax wheel and a reel, and in 1773 Sarah Guthery bought a spinning wheel. Both women were widows of the deceased whose goods were being sold and probably bought wheels that had been theirs prior to their husbands' deaths.(25)

There were a variety of options available for women to learn how to produce serviceable yarn. The most common method was for a mother to train her own daughters in the craft when they were young, for once her children could operate a wheel, the family labor force was extended. Some women were placed as apprentices, with formal indentures to learn the skill from people outside their families. Elizabeth England "put her Daughter Apprentice unto Nathaniel Jefferies of East Bradford . . . to Learn to Sew, & Spin." As part of the agreement Jefferies was to teach the girl to read and write and give her "Two Suits of Cloths one intire New."(26) Because he failed to comply with these terms, England took him to court in 1772. This agreement was similar to those drawn up for male apprentices.(27)

Free women trained to spin and with access to the appropriate equipment would have performed the work when they could fit it around other household tasks. If yarn was required for a specific item in a hurry, they might devote a block of time to the work. But unlike weaving, which demanded the full attention of the artisan, spinning could be done at short intervals amid such other household activities as child care, cooking, washing, etc.(28) If the wife of a householder had female help, either indentured servants, slaves, or hired labor, she would relegate the spinning jobs to them entirely or have them assist her with the work. Similarly, any female relatives living in the household would also have helped.(29)

Bound labor offered one way for a family to extend its labor force to assist in household tasks like spinning, especially before 1760. Many of the female slaves and servants coming into, or already living in, Pennsylvania were proficient at the task--clearly a desirable asset in a woman worker. Black women who knew how to make yarn on a spinning wheel had lived long enough in North America to learn these European skills. In 1730, for example, the American Weekly Mercury advertised the sale of "a very likely Negroe Woman, who has lived in Philadelphia from her Childhood, and speaks very good English, she can do all Sorts of Housework . . . ; she can Knit and Sew, Spin Flax, Cotton, Worsted, and Wool, very well. . . ."(30) European female servants whose spinning skills were highlighted originated in places like Holland, Ireland and Scotland.(31) Whether a woman servant/slave spun only wool, or linen, or both, her proficiency with a spinning wheel was a marketable commodity, especially because not all women possessed this skill. After 1760, although the use of bound labor declined substantially, this was not due to a decreased demand, but a change in the nature of the work force. For Pennsylvania householders, the use of free workers meant they had a more elastic labor supply. As a result local female spinners had increased wage earning opportunities.(32)

Both married and single women earned money by spinning commercially. Some went into the homes of others, used their equipment and fiber and were paid a wage for their labor, as in the case of Margaret Rock, who worked "2 Days in the Home" of George Brinton and the wife of Harold Chiffrow whom Brinton also hired to spin tow yam for him.(33) Others worked with fiber they produced on their own farms or purchased from others, spun it at home and sold it, usually to pay for a needed service.(34) Married women customarily disposed of their earnings in this manner while those who were single tended to spend their money on clothing for themselves and were not required to contribute directly to household finances.(35) In most account records, single and widowed women transacted the work in their own behalf, while married women either did so in combination with their husbands, or were totally subsumed under their husband's names.

Even though some women received special training as spinners and some spun for commercial purposes, in general spinning was regarded as a household task. The only time one sees the designation of "spinster" at this period is in wills and refers to the unmarried status of a woman, not her occupation. Occasionally women were listed on tax lists, but even in the years for which occupation taxes were levied, they were never taxed as spinners. Thus spinning did not have the formal (and therefore taxable) occupational status of such male-dominated crafts as weaving.

What differs between the traditional New England model and the Pennsylvania experience is that spinning was not done only by women for their family's use, though the household may have been a major consumer of the product. It was also done commercially, and wealthier females had the means to liberate themselves from the work by using an extended labor force of female slaves, servants or contract wage workers. Moreover, women's role in cloth making ceased at this point as they handed over their spun yarn to a skilled male artisan whom they paid to weave it into cloth.

Weaving as Men's Work: Joseph Eldridge, Propertied Weaver

Weaving was a more fully commercial activity in Chester County than spinning, with weavers representing approximately 13-20 percent of all taxable artisans between 1765 and 180--about 1 to 3 percent of the taxable population at this time.(36) The example of one Chester County weaver, Joseph Eldridge, provides insight into how these craftsmen were trained, their use of auxiliary labor and their artisanal life cycle. When followed by a composite portrait of weavers obtained from quantifiable sources, a clear picture of the work lives of these men emerges that is vastly different from the female experience in late eighteenth-century New England.

Eldridge was born in 1765 in Goshen Township where he lived until his death in 1845.(37) Descended from four generations of American weavers, his training and work cycle deviated little from those of his ancestors.(38) Due to the premature death of his mother, Eldridge, while still a boy, went to live with his unmarried uncle James Garrett and learn the weaving business. Over the years Joseph's status changed several times: after serving his apprenticeship, by 1789, at the age of 24, he was a fully trained weaver--an occupation for which he was taxed that year--in addition to being married and having a child.(39) At this point he was living with his wife and young family on his uncle's farm, probably paying for his keep by weaving and assisting his uncle with agricultural work.(40) In 1794 when James died he bequeathed his

esteemed friend and nephew . . . who now liveth with me in the house the whole Plantation or tract of Land and appurtenances that I now live on Situate in the Township of Goshen Containing about one hundred and Fifty acres be the same more or less. . . . I Also give and bequeath unto my said Nephew Joseph Eldridge the whole of my Stock, farming utensils and household furniture what ever that I am now Possessed of.(41)

The young man, a fifth generation weaver, now had a trade, tools, money inherited from his grandparents and a good deal of property with which to expand his own enlarging household and enter into the next phase of his life cycle.

Three of Eldridge's account books have survived and shed light on his business practices and changing work patterns.(42) The earliest entry is 1786 when Joseph was twenty-three years old, unmarried and childless. As a journeyman weaver, prior to having children and his uncle James's death, in 1794, with the ensuing responsibilities of running a farm, Eldridge produced more cloth than he did later. During this time, he had little help with his weaving; between 1786 and 1789 his annual output averaged approximately 625 yards.

By the late 1790s, however, as a propertied master weaver, increasing agricultural responsibilities left Eldridge with less time to weave himself. Since his own children were too small to help with the craft work, he hired young single men or "freemen" who lived with him to make much of the cloth produced by his workshop.(43) For example, journeyman weaver, Isaac Yarnall, began a year's boarding with Eldridge on April 14, 1795, for which he paid |pounds~22/10/0. Like the single female spinners who spent their earnings on personal items, Yarnall bought such things as a sheepskin apron, a silver brooch, yarn for stockings, tobacco, powder and shot and candles from his employer. In return, he wove for half pay and performed a variety of agricultural jobs, for which he received additional wages. At the end of the year, if mutually agreeable, Eldridge and Yarnall could renew their agreement. However, if the young man was in a position to acquire his own property or received a better offer elsewhere, Eldridge would have to find a replacement and enter into a similar agreement with someone new.(44) Operating under this type of arrangement, Eldridge wove only 60 yards himself in 1794, compared to his annual output of 625 yards a decade earlier; his paid worker produced 470 yards of cloth.

As his sons matured, Joseph taught them the skills he had learned from his uncle. By 1809, two sons and a contractual artisan produced about 1,499 yards of cloth among them, more than double what Eldridge had made when he worked alone. The added familial labor freed the older weaver from the necessity of making cloth himself and allowed him to develop further both his agricultural and craft operations. He expanded the latter in 1813, when he acquired a fulling mill, thereby transforming his weaving operation into a small woolen factory that could produce finished cloth for sale.

Eldridge's life as a farmer/weaver paralleled that of his Pennsylvania weaving forebears. He learned his trade from a relative with whom he worked until he acquired his own land (in this case by inheritance). After weaving first for himself and later supplementing his output with contractual, then family, labor, Eldridge was able simultaneously to produce more cloth for sale and to expand his farming activities. Although he utilized contractual workers to assist him while his family was young rather than the bound labor used by earlier generations, Eldridge continued the tradition of training his sons in his craft which they practiced until well into the nineteenth century.(45) An examination of a broader population of Pennsylvania weavers demonstrates that many artisans experienced a life cycle similar to Eldridge.

Life Cycle of Weavers

It took time to acquire the knowledge needed to make saleable cloth. In eighteenth-century Chester County, the two most common methods of obtaining this was through a formal apprenticeship or, as in the case of Eldridge, by working with a family member trained in weaving. Sufficient evidence exists to suggest that apprenticeship occurred regularly throughout the period.(46) Once a young man had acquired the rudiments of weaving, the apprentice assisted his master until he was adequately trained to take over much of the work. At this point, the teacher had several alternatives: if he owned a farm he could devote more time to agricultural work, or if his property holdings were small, he could increase his cloth output by working on another loom in conjunction with his apprentice.(47)

While an apprentice would have been helpful to a weaver with no children or children too young to participate in craft work, the majority of weavers, like Joseph Eldridge, taught their skills to members of their own household, a continuation of European traditions.(48) It is difficult to say if all the male offspring in a family learned to weave, but most would have acquired at least basic knowledge of the trade. Once trained, a son, like an apprentice, was a major contributor to the family's cloth output, retaining some of his earnings until he reached the age of majority when he could set up on his own. Until this time however, he was legally obligated to provide his services to his father.(49) An artisan without his own family, like Eldridge's uncle, might teach his craft to a young relative or seek alternative assistance in the form of bound labor or contractual wage workers.

The most common use of bound labor was in the form of indentured servants, especially in the decades prior to 1770 when there were fewer young, native born artisans available and immigration was active.(50) This type of worker required a cash investment, but many men arriving in Pennsylvania from Europe during the period were already fully trained weavers. As a result, they could be productive immediately and could also be set to work at other household and agricultural tasks.(51) If advertisements for runaway indentured servants are representative of the broader population of this class of people, it appears that the peak decades for servant weavers were the 1730s, 40s and 50s and they were comprised almost exclusively of Irish and English men. There were almost twice as many of the former as the latter though the English were more numerous before 1740.(52) An analysis of the loom owners with servants or apprentices shows that the highest number occurred among married men with no offspring and men whose children were minors. The use of bound labor decreased as the population expanded in Chester County, producing a growing number of propertyless young people. As a result a system of short term, contractual wage labor replaced the use of indentured servants.(53)

While some propertyless contract weavers may have had their own equipment, others needed access to the tools of their trade and all required a market for their product.(54) They obtained these by working for landholding cloth makers who owned the appropriate implements and acted as the agents for selling the fabric. Once a propertied loom owner (who usually had been a weaver himself or related to one) could afford to hire journeymen to use his cloth making equipment he was free to perform other work while still sharing the profits from weaving. According to the tax lists, in 1765 there was a ratio of one weaver with property to one without; this changed in 1781 to 2.5 propertyless weavers to one with land, a proportion which was unaltered in 1799.(55) The cloth output could have risen slightly as a result of this since the work may have become more full-time than previously. The increasing availability of workers transformed many landholding weavers from practicing craftsmen to employers, thereby establishing the ground work for a manufacturing sector that appeared in the early nineteenth century.(56) Despite these changes the relations between employer and employed remained much as they had throughout the century.(57)

Trained, native born weavers, then, had the option of working on a short-term, renewable contractual basis, or if they had their own farm they could choose to make all the cloth themselves when agricultural duties permitted, and/or hire someone else to help with the weaving. For many weavers, these options represented consecutive phases through which they passed during the course of their lives--apprentice, contractual worker, property owner--though not everyone was fortunate enough to reach the last stage.

Benjamin Simcock, Inmate Weaver

Benjamin Simcock was another eighteenth-century, Pennsylvania weaver who illustrates the artisan life cycle, though unsuccessfully.(58) Unlike Eldridge, who was propertied and prosperous, Simcock appears in the court records at the end of his life as a pauper. After the death of his parents, Simcock was bound as an apprentice in 1725 at the age of six, to weaver John Lea, who died several years later.(59) Lea's executors then sent the young boy to work for another weaver in East Marlborough where he stayed "two winters & one summer," until his master moved to Philadelphia County and sold him to John Sketchely. Simcock served Sketchely "some more than four years, he then being about 20 years, & worked there a Journeyman Some more than three years." Soon after leaving, Simcock married and went to live as an inmate for the next thirteen years with Sketchely's stepson to whom he "Paid ten Pounds a year . . ., Paid all Taxes & Served Parish Offices." At the end of this time, Simcock made the step to which most artisans aspired when he bought a house and lot of his own in Darby Township. For some reason, however, he never lived there and sold it a year later. He was about 33 years old when he next moved to a plantation in Marion County and resumed inmate status for |pounds~15 a year rent. Beginning in his early forties, Simcock "broke up housekeeping and . . . worked about from Place to Place as a Journeyman Weaver and some time for himself . . . " until, at age 69 he presented himself as a pauper to the overseers of the poor to be looked after in Ridley township, the place of his birth. Although Simcock experienced the traditional life cycle of apprentice, journeyman, inmate and even briefly, property holder, without the support of a propertied family or children to assist him, his ability to succeed was not assured.

A Broader Picture

A composite portrait of weavers from an analysis of data contained in wills, after-death household inventories and tax assessments relating to 115 eighteenth-century Chester County loom owners, confirms that the experience of Pennsylvania weavers was very different from our image of housewives producing textiles for their farm families. Moreover it demonstrates that other weavers went through a similar artisan life cycle to Joseph Eldridge and Benjamin Simcock--apprentice, journeyman, and master weaver working for himself (either to accumulate capital or maintain themselves and families).(60)

The most active stages of an artisan's life occurred during his younger years when he was either single, or married with no children or minor ones. This is when, according to tax assessments, the majority of people were identified by the craft they practiced.

Forty percent of all people designated as weavers were single men, followed by married men with no children (25 percent), a fact which is not surprising given that many of them would not yet have had the responsibilities attendant on working land. Indeed, approximately 75 percent of the men taxed as weavers between 1765 and 1799 did not have sufficient acreage to farm.(61) It was during these early stages that Joseph Eldridge's textile production was highest.

The occupancy of either inherited, purchased or rented land usually occurred later in life. Frequently a change in nomenclature signified this new stage in a cloth maker's life cycle; many of the younger men taxed as weavers or who bought property or went to court and were called weavers on deeds and depositions, were designated as "yeoman" or "farmer" in probate when they died.(62) This suggests both a rise in status and that young men spent more time at their craft than they did later.(63) Although loom owners of all ages had crops or husbandry tools listed in their inventories, not surprisingly, the highest number were among older men. Once a weaver made the transition to landholder, therefore, his time was spent on a wider variety of tasks than previously. It is unlikely that farmer/artisans stopped weaving altogether, however, but spent less time at it, while obtaining the help of younger craftsmen to continue with the work they could no longer do unassisted.

There were several options for propertyless weavers. Single men like Isaac Yarnall, without their own loom, could board with a landholding weaver like Joseph Eldridge, work on his equipment for half pay and help with other farm jobs. Another alternative was to rent a cottage on the land of a more established weaver/farmer or a large entrepreneurial farmer.(64) A cottager or inmate with his own equipment could weave for himself and work for his landlord when needed. Moreover, a married inmate could augment his earnings through the labor of his wife who could also hire herself out to work in addition to keeping a garden to diminish the necessity of buying a lot of food. This is illustrated by George Brinton who kept separate accounts for his male and female cottagers. In 1802-1804 he paid two couples to work for him--the wives for spinning and the husbands for weaving.(65) An inmate with his own equipment, therefore, had more control over the disposition of his time and output and a greater potential to accumulate capital than a freeman weaver who worked on his employer's looms. If a young man did not have a farm when he married, like Benjamin Simcock, he could move into the inmate or cottager category in the hope of eventually acquiring property of his own.

Clearly many weaver/farmers did not work alone, and over a third of the loom owners had more than one loom. Despite the size of this piece of TABULAR DATA OMITTED equipment, most weavers would have set it up in a room in the house, perhaps the hall.(66) But aside from space requirements, weaving was a noisy and dirty occupation, especially if more than one person worked at a time; thus some weavers housed their tools in outbuildings or shops.(67) Although not all the structures were specifically designated for cloth production--for example, some equipment was in "spring houses"--about 6 percent of the loom owners had designated weavers' shops.(68) These independent buildings would have been similar to that listed on the property of David Bailey of East Fallowfield in the 1796 tax assessment: "1 Log house for a Weaver Shop 16 Feet Square;" shops like this could house two and possibly three looms.(69) An examination of the property holdings and life stages of the men with weaver's shops reveals that most were owned by people with larger than average acreage who were in the later stages of their lives.(70) This supports the fact that these men hired younger weavers to work for them and probably conducted their weaving operations more along the lines of a small business than when they did the work themselves. This was true throughout the century.(71)

Table 3

Land Status Of Weavers(*)

                          1765            1781            1799
                     %(a)      (#)      %      (#)      %      (#)

Landholding(b)      25.0      ( 3)    35.2    ( 6)    18.5    ( 5)
Nonlandholding
renters             50.0      ( 6)     --      --      7.4    ( 2)
inmates              8.3      ( 1)    47.1    ( 8)    37.0    (10)
freemen              --        --     11.8    ( 2)    37.0    (10)
unspecified(c)      16.7      ( 2)     5.9    ( 1)     --      --
Subtotal            75.0      ( 9)    64.8    (11)    81.4    (22)

Total weavers                 (12)            (17)            (27)

a Percentage of all weavers taxed.

b Includes both land owners and tenants taxed for acreage.

c No acreage or status assigned.

* SOURCE: Chester County Tax Lists, Chester County Archives, West Chester,
Pennsylvania. Based on a tabulation of all taxables in Darby, East
Fallowfield, Goshen, East Nottingham, Pikeland, Thornbury and Tredyffrin
townships for the years 1765, 1781. The same townships with the exception of
Darby (separated from Chester County by a boundary change in 1789) were
included in the 1799 run.

In summary, a weaver's output was highest during his youth when he had few other responsibilities of farm and family. Moving through the life cycle, his role became more supervisory and less productive as he utilized the labor of younger, unpropertied weavers, freeing himself to devote more time to other work. But was weaving in eighteenth-century Chester County the exclusive territory of male artisans or did females also participate in this activity?

Women and Weaving

Because of the strong male bias in eighteenth-century records, it is much easier to examine the role of men in cloth making than that of women. It is difficult, therefore, to know to what extent girls might have participated in learning the requisite skills along with their brothers. There is no doubt that male artisans dominated the craft of weaving in eighteenth-century Chester County, but some evidence suggests that females were not entirely excluded.

Although many women possessed their own spinning equipment, only five could be identified who had looms.(72) In every case, the implements originally belonged to their husbands, or in the instance of Rebecca Davis, her son, who predeceased her. Several of the women only inherited the tools because their children were minors; indeed, Mary Willis's husband left her his estate in trust for their son John. Hannah Shortledge had no children and her husband bequeathed her everything. John Davis willed his property to his brother, but only after the death of their mother; hence the looms in Rebecca Davis's inventory had probably belonged her son. When these women died, if they specified the disposition of the tools, it was to a male relative.(73)

It is almost impossible to know whether or not the women who owned weaving equipment actually used it. If not, it was probably because they had too many other responsibilities or were too old to weave. Females who were daughters and/or wives of weavers were undoubtedly familiar with at least some, if not all the tasks involved in making a piece of cloth. If they had time, they would have helped their fathers and/or husbands with their work. But weaving more than just the simplest patterns demanded concentration and uninterrupted time, both of which would be difficult for women to obtain, especially those who were married and had children.(74) If looms continued to be used after a weaver's death, probably a son, servant or hired person carried on the work.(75) More likely, however, when a wife inherited her husband's equipment, if there was no one in the family to use it she sold it.(76)

The textile sector in eighteenth-century, rural Pennsylvania was vastly different from its New England counterpart. There was a clearly defined gender division of labor that did not alter over the period; the sector was more commercial; and there was a stronger continuation of European craft traditions right up until early nineteenth-century industrialization.

European Traditions

Many Chester County households continued to follow the guidelines set out for the seventeenth-century British housewife who was advised that once she had given her spun yarn to the male weaver she "hath finished her labour: for in the weaving, walking |shrinking~, and dressing thereof she can challenge no property more than to entreat them severally to discharge their duties with a good conscience."(77) This was reinforced in Britain through a variety of regulations that prohibited women from weaving. An exception to the exclusion of females from the cloth making and finishing branches of textile manufacture was a widow of a weaver who could take over her husband's work and tools as long as she remained a widow.(78) Similar restrictions existed in other areas of eighteenth-century Europe as well, though there were regional variations.(79)

This structure of women spinning and men weaving commercially in Pennsylvania resembled the experience of British weavers. The stages of apprentice, contractual worker and weaver/farmer paralleled those of apprentice, journeyman, and master found within the English system.(80) Other common features included the existence of bi-occupations--the custom of combining artisanal production with agricultural pursuits; the use of contractual, live-in workers; and the employment of independent artisans who lived in their own cottages and were paid on a daily basis or for doing a specified task.(81) Prior to the industrialization of textile production, therefore, rural Pennsylvanians followed the artisan experience they had known in Europe, and for most of the eighteenth century could confidently expect to move through a clearly defined and familiar life cycle. Glimmerings of change can be seen in the latter part of the century, however, with the growing number of landless cloth makers in the region.(82)

Conclusion: Beyond Gender

This picture of the organization of cloth manufacture in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania is very different from the situation in New England. A further comparison of the two regions suggests that gender is not the only distinction. The scale of domestic textile production was different. Throughout the eighteenth century, Chester County had a ratio of approximately seven households with spinning wheels for every household with a loom, while Essex County, Massachusetts had an average ratio of about three to one.(83) Almost twice as many households in Massachusetts had looms.(84) In addition, the dependency on an extended labor force in Pennsylvania, first through the use of bound labor and later through contract wage workers, does not occur to the same extent or in the same manner in New England.(85) Another important disparity between the two regions is the ratio of males to females in the population: by the late eighteenth century women outnumbered men in Massachusetts, while in Pennsylvania the situation was reversed.(86)

The preceding analysis demonstrates that we must move beyond the past monolithic interpretation of early American domestic textile manufacture. It was a complex process that grew out of its European roots. But we need to know more about the reasons for such pronounced regional differences by exploring the relationship of cloth production to factors such as demographics, agricultural production, and the availability of labor and markets. Moreover a more sustained regional comparison is required to answer a whole series of questions relating to the structure of the textile sector in early North America. Were there areas where women had always been responsible for cloth making and did this represent a break from tradition, and why? Could female weavers expect to experience life cycles similar to their male counterparts? What part did industrialization play in altering the gender roles inherent in cloth making? Was there a difference in the status of male and female cloth makers in the eighteenth and later in the nineteenth centuries? Did women produce the same kinds of cloth as men and were they as skilled? Were they paid equivalent prices for the fabric they made? Did men and women market their cloth in a similar manner?

The issues surrounding the transition of textile production from craft to industry are being addressed gradually.(87) But in North America we must know more about the earlier stages of hand cloth manufacture in order to assess fully the depth of this change. The discussion of the gender division of labor in rural Pennsylvania takes a step towards establishing a more complex framework than the previously accepted New England model. It helps us better to understand the different roles of men and women in North American craft production and the impact of migration and industrialization on them. Moreover, it suggests the need for more comparative work on other aspects of domestic textile manufacture such as the availability of raw materials, the extent of local markets and the consumption of locally made cloth relative to imported fabrics. As these pieces are put into place the industrialization puzzle will emerge in all its complexity.

ENDNOTES

I would like to thank James T. Lemon, Grant McCracken, Thiery Ruddel, Lucy Simler, Laurel Thatchter Ulrich and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier draft of this paper. Funding for some of the research was provided by the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, the William E Sullivan Research Fellowship, Museum of American Textile History, and the Arthur H. Cole grant-in-aid for research in Economic History.

1. For an overview of the literature on the British textile industry see Stanley Chapman "Industrialization and Production: a Bibliographic Survey," Beverly Lemire and Adrienne Hood, eds. "Surveying Textile History: Perspectives for New Research," special issue of Material History Bulletin 31 (Spring 1990): 15-21.

2. For a review of the American scholarship on the topic see Gail Fowler Mohanty, "From Craft To Industry: Textile Production in the United States," Lemire and Hood, eds., "Surveying Textile History," pp. 23-31.

3. William R. Bagnall, The Textile Industries of the United States, Including Sketches and Notices of Cotton, Woolen, Silk, and Linen Manufacture in the Colonial Period, 1639-1810 (Boston, 1893); Perry Walton, The Story of Textiles: A Bird's Eye View of the History of the Beginning and the Growth of the Industry by Which Mankind is Clothed (Boston, 1912); Arthur Harrison Cole, The American Wool Manufacture (1925, reprint, New York, 1969).

4. Rolls Milton Tryon, Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640-1860 (Chicago, 1917); Victor S. Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860 v. 1 (1929, reprint, New York, 1949).

5. Alice Morse Earle, Home Life In Colonial Days (1898, reprint, Stockbridge, Mass, 1974); Elizabeth Cynthia Barney Buel, The Tale of the Spinning Wheel (Litchfield, Conn., 1903); Carl Holliday, Woman's Life in Colonial Days (1922, reprint, New York, 1964); Edith Abbott, Women in Industry, A Study in American Economic History (1909, reprint, New York, 1916).

6. Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (New York, 1979); Elizabeth Hitz, "A Technical and Business Revolution: American Woolens to 1832" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1978); David J. Jeremy, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technologies Between Britain and America, 1790-1830s (North Andover and Cambridge, Mass., 1981); Gail Fowler Mohanty, "Experimentation in Textile Technology, 1788-1790, and its Impact on Handloom Weaving and Weavers in Rhode Island," Technology and Culture 29 (1988): 1-31; Mohanty, "Putting up with Putting-Out: Power-Loom Diffusion and Outwork for Rhode Island Mills, 1821-1829," Journal of the Early Republic 9 (June 1989): 191-216; Philip Scranton, Proprietary Capitalism: the Textile Manufacture at Philadelphia, 1800-1885 (Cambridge, 1983); Scranton, "Varieties of Paternalism: Industrial Structures and the Social Relations of Production in American Textiles," American Quarterly 36 (1984): 235-257; Cynthia J. Shelton, The Mills of Manayunk: Industrialization and Social Conflict in the Philadelphia Region, 1787-1837 (Baltimore, 1986); Barbara Tucker, Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry, 1790-1860 (Ithaca, 1984); Anthony F. C. Wallace, Rockdale, the Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (New York, 1972).

7. Joan M. Jensen, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750-1850 (New Haven, 1986); James A. Henretta, "The War for Independence and American Economic Development," in Ronald Hoffman, John J. McCusker, and Russell R. Menard, eds., The Economy of Early America, the Revolutionary Period, 1763-1790 (Charlottesville, 1988); Allan Kulifkoff, "The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America," William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, v. 66 (January, 1989): 120-144.

8. The only recent study that focuses on the colonial period is Adrienne D. Hood, "Organization and Extent of Textile Manufacture in Eighteenth-Century Rural Pennsylvania: A Case Study of Chester County," (Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego, 1988).

9. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, "Martha Ballard and Her Girls: Women's Work in Eighteenth-Century Maine," in Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor in Early America (Chapel Hill, 1988), p. 90, says that in the late eighteenth century in the Kennebec Valley over 60% of households had wheels and over 25% had looms.

10. Ibid., in 1730, in York County Maine, 40 percent of inventoried households had spinning wheels, but only 3 percent had looms. D. T. Ruddel suggests that a similar shift in the gender of weavers occurred in late eighteenth-century Quebec, "Domestic Textile Production in colonial Quebec, 1608-1840," Material History Bulletin 31 (Spring 1990): 44-45.

11. Jean B. Russo, "Self-sufficiency and Local Exchange: Free Craftsmen in the Rural Chesapeake Economy," Lois Green Carr, Phillip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, eds., Colonial Chesapeake Society (Chapel Hill, 1988), pp. 392-93.

12. Ibid., 402.

13. Lemon, The Best Poor Man's Country, pp. 13 and 47. Lemon, "The Agricultural Practices of National Groups in Eighteenth Century Southeastern Pennsylvania," Geographical Review v. 56 (1966): 468, Table 1.

14. Ethnicity is difficult to assess with accuracy because there was a tendency to Anglicize names and very few sources specifically identify a person's ethnic origins. However, based on genealogical information Table 1 was derived from categorizing 69 probated loom owners by last name.

15. For discussions of English and Welsh woolen production see: Peter J. Bowden, The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1962); E. Lipson, The History of the Woollen and Worsted Industries (London, 1965); J. de L. Mann, The Cloth Industry in the West of England from 1640-1880 (Oxford, 1971); Alan Rogers, "Rural Industries and Social, Structure: The Framework Knitting Industry of South Nottinghamshire 1660-1840," Textile History v. 12 (1981): 7-26; and J. Geraint Jenkins, The Welsh Woollen Industry (Cardiff, 1969).

16. For details on the Irish linen manufacture see Conrad Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (1925, Reprint, Oxford, 1964), pp. 31-60; and Alex J. Warden, The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern (1864, reprint, London, 1967), pp. 388-420. Information on German linen production can be found in Eckart Schremmer, "The Textile Industry in South Germany, 1750 to 1850," Textile History v. 7 (1976): 60-89.

17. An analysis of 115 inventories of loom owners in Chester County shows that 80 percent (91) had crops and/or farming implements as well. The inventories are in the probate records at Chester County Archives, West Chester, Pennsylvania (hereafter CCA). For a more detailed analysis of the bi-occupationalism in Chester County see Paul G. E. Clemens and Lucy Simler, "Rural Labor and the Farm Household in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1750-1820," in Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor, pp. 121-23.

18. I expected to find differences among the ethnic groups, especially in terms of the types of cloth they wove. However, despite detailed attempts to discern these, I was unable to find clearly defined variations. This could be because the surviving evidence is heavily weighted towards the English-speaking population and it is not always easy to distinguish among the groups of which this was comprised. Wherever possible I will try to indicate if there were noticeable differences.

19. For evidence that spinning was women's work in Europe see Gill, Irish Linen Industry, p. 38; Gay L. Gullickson, Spinners and Weavers of Auffay, Rural Industry and the Sexual Division of Labor in a French Village, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 59 and 69; and Schremmer, "The Textile Industry in South Germany," p. 61.

20. Based on data from a sampling of 825 Chester County inventories (hereafter inventory data base). These numbers are probably low and do not account for property given away during the decedent's lifetime or that many women's estates were not inventoried.

21. Chester County Wills and Inventories, CCA (hereafter CCWI) #1545, Hugh Boyd, West Nottingham Township, filed Sept. 19, 1754. For other examples of men leaving spinning equipment to their wives, see the following files: CCWI #562, Michael Blunston, 1763; CCWI #1652, John Holland, d. 1757; CCWI #2877, William Mason, d. 1774; CCWI #4251, Daniel Solberger, d. 1792.

22. CCWI #2844. both his daughters, Isabel and Elizabeth were given their spinning wheels.

23. CCWI #2822.

24. CCWI #4387.

25. See Robert Power file CCWI #1417 and James Guthery, file CCWI #2808.

26. Elizabeth England, Petition, Quarter Sessions, August 25, 1772, CCA.

27. For a discussion of female apprenticeship in England at the time see K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England 1660-1900 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 270-319.

28. For example, CCWI #51 shows that the two spinning wheels were located in the kitchen, which would have facilitated the incorporation of spinning with women's other tasks.

29. Lucy Simler, "She Came to Work/She Went to Work, The Development of a Female Rural Proletariat in Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1760-1820," (unpublished paper for meeting, "Women and the Transition to Capitalism in Rural America, 1760-1940," April 1989), pp. 16-22 describes in detail how women spinners worked for wages.

30. American Weekly Mercury, Apr. 9-16, 1730. For other ads selling black women who could spin see ibid., Oct. 9-26, 1721; Pennsylvania Gazette, May 10, 1733; American Weekly Mercury, Jan. 11-18, 1736/7; Pennsylvania Gazette, Apr. 12, 1764; ibid., Nov. 6, 1776.

31. American Weekly Mercury, Apr. 20-27, 1738; Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 2, 1744; ibid., July 27, 1774.

32. Sharon V. Salinger, "To Serve Well and Faithfully," Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania, 1682-1800 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 137-52 and Lucy Simler, "The Landless Worker: An Index of Economic and Social Change in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1750-1820," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography CXIV (April 1990): 172-73.

33. George Brinton Account Book, 1781-1800, Thornbury Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Box E-G, Family File. Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, Pennsylvania (hereafter CCHS).

34. CCWI #117, Robert Power vendue list shows that women bought fiber to spin. Elizabeth Williams bought tow and linen cloth from weaver Joseph Eldridge as well as Indian corn and buckwheat in the 1780s and 90s and paid him in part in cash and in part by spinning tow and yarn for bedticks; Joseph Eldridge, Account Books, 1788-1795, man. #3786, CCHS. In 1803, "widow grace" paid a portion of her account with fuller, Calvin Cooper by spinning, Calvin Cooper Account Book, 1791-1802, W. Bradford B.H., v.1, CCHS.

35. Simler, "She Came to Work," p. 19.

36. In 1765 weavers comprised 17.6% of all craftsmen who were taxed; 20.2% in 1781; and 13.8% in 1799. They comprised 1.3%, 1.9%, and 2.9%, respectively of the entire taxable population. These numbers are based on a tabulation of all taxable artisans in the townships of Darby, East Fallowfield, Goshen, East Nottingham, Pikeland, Thornbury, and Tredyffrin for 1765 and 1781; Darby was separated from the county by a boundary change in 1789 so is not included in the 1799 analysis (hereafter tax list data base). For a detailed breakdown of all artisans in the sampling see Hood, "Organization and Extent of Textile Manufacture," pp. 38-9.

37. Genealogical information is from J. Smith Futhey and Gilbert Cope, History of Chester County Pennsylvania, With Genealogical and Biographical Sketches (Philadelphia, 1881), p. 530. Other data for the following discussion of Joseph Eldridge can be found in CCWI #4344; and Joseph Eldridge, Account Books, 1788-1795, man. #3786, 3787, and 3788, CCH.

38. For details of the preceding generations of weavers from whom Eldridge was descended see Hood, "Organization and Extent of Textile Manufacture," pp. 140-43.

39. Futhey and Cope, History of Chester County, p. 530.

40. Lucy Simler, "The Landless Worker:" p. 176 says that artisans who lived as cottagers or inmates of a landholder paid rent by working at their trade. If they did field work it was for wages (though it was not required) and as long as they gave priority to the landlord's weaving, a weaver could weave for others if time permitted.

41. CCWI #4344.

42. Joseph Eldridge, Account Book, 1788-1795, man. #3786, CCHS.

43. Lucy Simler, "Tenancy in Colonial Pennsylvania: The Case of Chester County," William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, v. 43, 4 (October 1986): 548, describes freemen as single, nonlandowning individuals, "usually an artisan, farmer, or laborer living in the household of another. These men were subject to a poll tax since they owned no property and after 1758, "freemen living with their parents and helping them on the farm or at their trade also appear on the lists, being no longer exempt from taxation by either law or custom."

44. This is what happened with Yarnall's predecessor, James Alcorn, who worked for Eldridge in 1794. After Eldridge settled accounts with Alcorn for his year's work, he hired Yarnall with a similar agreement. Both Alcorn and Yarnall were single and trained as weavers. It appears that Yarnall worked for Eldridge for several years because in the tax assessment of 1798 for Goshen, Yarnall was taxed as a weaver and freeman living with Eldridge.

45. Eldridge's great uncles, Samuel Garrett Jr. and Thomas Garrett, had indentured servants to help them with their work, especially needed since none of the former's children appears to have followed their father's trade and Thomas died without offspring. CCWI #1031 (Samuel Garrett) and CCWI #1097 (Thomas Garrett).

46. The evidence is in the form of indentures, court petitions and depositions, and will and inventory notations, see for example: James Wiley, Petition, Quarter Sessions, Aug. 31, 1731, Bound Volume of Servants and Apprentices, CCA; Petition of Divers Inhabitants of Newtown to Court of General Quarter Sessions, Chester Co., PA, May, 1741, CCA; CCWI #727, Thomas Garret of Darby (d. 1748); CCWI #1669, William Lewis of Newtown (d. 1757); Deposition of Samuel Oakes, Court of Quarter Sessions, May 1774, CCA; Indenture of Apprenticeship Between Abishai Ottey and James Baker, May 7, 1788, ms 28062, CCHS.

47. For more detailed analyses of the system of apprenticeship in North America see: Jean-Pierre Hardy et David-Thiery Ruddel, Les Apprentis Artisans a Quebec, 1660-1815 (Montreal, 1977); Marcus Wilson Jernegan, Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America (New York, 1931); Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (New York, 1965, first published 1946); Ian M. G. Quimby, Apprenticeship in Colonial Philadelphia, (New York and London, 1985); W. J. Rorabaugh, The Craft Apprentice, from Franklin to the Machine Age in America (New York and Oxford, 1986); Salinger, "To Serve Well and Faithfully," pp. 6-8; Mary M. Schweitzer, Custom and Contract: Household, Government, and the Economy in Colonial Pennsylvania (New York, 1987), pp. 34-41.

48. According to Robert Malcolmson, Life and Labour in England, 1700-1780 (London, 1981), p. 64, after male children were trained they "continued to work in the family shop until, on the death of the father or at the time of their marriage, they set up their own households in which, as a role, weaving was their principal means of support. Some parents may have helped their children purchase a loom." In eighteenth-century England, only a small percentage of children were apprenticed to masters outside their own families and it was common for sons of craft workers (e.g. weavers) to be taught a trade by their fathers, older brothers or another relative. It was also the case in eighteenth-century French Canada. Hardy and Ruddel, Les Apprentis Artisans, p. 92.

49. Rorabaugh, Craft apprentice, p. 83.

50. Although a few loom owners had slaves (3 out of 115), they were rare and generally not used as an alternative labor force among these artisans. A survey of the 115 Chester County loom owners shows that 13 owned servants, the peak periods being the mid decades of the eighteenth century, declining sharply after the 1760s (1710-29 = 7.8%; 1730-49 = 15.4%; 1750-69 = 46.1%; 1770-89 = 30.7%; 1790-1800 = 0%). According to Salinger, "To Serve Well and Faithfully," pp. 137-152, this follows the pattern within the artisan population in Philadelphia. John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill and London, 1985), pp. 202-03 give a good synthesis of the periods of immigration to Pennsylvania.

51. The American Weekly Mercury and Pennsylvania Gazette are full of ads throughout the eighteenth century for boat loads of servants for sale who were weavers and for runaway servants who were weavers. There are too many to enumerate fully, but see for examples of the former, American Weekly Mercury, Oct. 31-Nov. 7, 1728; Pennsylvania Gazette, July 9, 1741; Pennsylvania Gazette, Aug. 14, 1755. For examples of the latter see American Weekly Mercury, Apr. 4-11, 1728; Pennsylvania Gazette, July 8, 1742; Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept. 20, 1764; Pennsylvania Gazette, Apr. 19, 1775.

52. It is extremely difficult to determine the ethnicity of bound labor. Two things allow us to have some indication of this: ads for runaway servants usually mention their country of birth and arriving ships advertised servants for sale and designated the port from which they embarked. Runaway ads must be used with caution as it is possible that one group had a greater propensity for running away than others. However, many of the shiploads of servants during the 1720s to 1750s originate from England and Ireland, which seems to correlate with the ethnicity of runaway servants (though Germans could have gone through these ports as well). Given that there was a large influx of Germans to Pennsylvania at this time it is surprising not to see more indication of weavers from this group. Were there no German weaver servants or were they less likely to run away? These questions are unanswerable at the present. In general, there seem to be no major discernable ethnic differences in cloth production, a conclusion similar to that of others who have worked on this region, see Simler "The Landless Worker," p. 186.

53. See Simler, "The Landless Worker," for a good discussion of the transition to wage labor.

54. Ibid., p. 176 shows that some contract weavers had their own looms which they moved around with them.

55. Based on the tax list data base, in 1765 there were 28 propertied weavers and 27 without; in 1781 there were 36 with and 97 without; in 1799 there were 54 with and 129 without.

56. Sharon V. Salinger, "Artisans, Journeymen, and the Transformation of Labor in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia," William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, v. 40 (1983): 62-84, argues that in Philadelphia by the last decades of the eighteenth century there was a transformation within the artisan population from a labor system which was heavily dependent on servants and slaves to one of free wage laborers. This change produced job insecurity and widened the gap between masters and workers. While late eighteenth-century, Chester County landowning artisans may have moved more toward becoming employers and away from being practicing craftsmen, they continued to rely on the same type of labor (contractual and live-in) as they had throughout the eighteenth century.

57. This is similar to the situation in Yorkshire, England a century earlier as described in John Small, "Manufacturer or Artisan? The Relationship Between Economic and Cultural Change in the Early Stages of the Eighteenth-Century Industrialization,"Journal of Social History v. 25, #4 (1992): 803, where there was little social difference between master weavers and journeymen as they all shared the same artisanal culture.

58. I would like to thank Lucy Simler for bringing this case to my attention. The information on Benjamin Simcock is from a Deposition from Simcock, May 29, 1788 and an Order of Removal, April 16, 1788, Court of Quarter Sessions, CCA.

59. CCWI #241, John Lea's inventory shows he died in January 1727 leaving three looms, one of them a broad loom, and a great deal of miscellaneous weaving equipment.

60. In addition to the 115 loom owners, the analysis is based on the tax list data base.

61. For those taxed as weavers in the tax list data base, 26.2% had property while 30.8% were identified as inmates, 16.3% as freemen and 19.1% as renters. It is difficult to know for certain whether the nonlandholders worked full time at weaving, but the designation and taxing of an occupation suggests that it occupied the majority of a person's time. See Hood, "Organization and Extent of Textile manufacture, Chapter I for a discussion of the landholding categories of eighteenth-century Chester County residents.

62. See for example, CCWI #1958, William Downard, d. 1761 (at about age 70) who was called a "yeoman" in his bond of administration, but in 1736 when he was about 45 years old he was called "weaver," Pennsylvania Archives, series 1, v. 1, p. 512; CCWI #2834; John Taggart, d. 1774 in Vincent Township, was called "yeoman" on his inventory, but in 1765 he was taxed as a weaver living in Uwchlan township; CCWI #5283 William Mann, d. 1806 in Sadsbury called himself a farmer in his will, but in 1799, he was taxed as a "weaver" in the adjacent township of East Fallowfield.

63. Out of 56 people taxed as weavers in the tax list data base, only 14 or 25% were taxed on property holdings while 42 or 75% were inmates, freemen, and nonlandholders. Clearly, those property holders identified as weavers were still devoting large amounts of time to their trade. Moreover, weavers owned an average of 80.5 acres of land and if one eliminates the two men who had very large holdings (500 and 315 acres) the others owned an average of 25 acres, well under the average eighteenth-century Chester County holding of 125 acres as estimated by Lemon, Best Poor Man's Country, p. 89. See Kulikoff, "Transition to Capitalism," p. 141 for a discussion of the meaning of the term "yeoman." Smail, "Manufacturer or Artisan," p. 797-98 argues that status for late seventeenth-century West Riding clothiers came not from cloth production but from attaining yeoman status by having enough money to rent or own land in addition to the income earned from artisanal work.

64. Clemens and Simler, "Rural Labor," p. 140. For a detailed discussion of the inmate system see Simler, "The Landless Worker," pp. 175-177.

65. Ibid., pp. 15-28; and Jensen, Loosening the Bonds, pp. 43-45; Clemens and Simler, "Rural Labor," p. 135.

66. CCWI #697, James Shortledge (d. 1739) had two looms listed as "Goods in the house." Jack Michel, "'In a Manner and Fashion Suitable to Their Degree'," p. 46 says that in many houses the hall was the room used for a variety of purposes and it would have been here that weaving might have been done.

67. The action of pulling the beater forward to ensure that each weft thread is properly in place can be very noisy; weaving produces a lot of dust or lint (especially when working with bast fibers); and linen, tow and hemp often have to be kept damp to weave, thereby making a space separate from the daily household activities desirable.

68. CCWI #5448, James Clark (d. 1808) had a loom in the "spring house."

69. Dimensions for other weavers' shops were specified in the West Cain tax assessment for 1799 as: 16 x 20, 18 x 18, 10 x 15, and 14 x 12 feet, CCA.

70. Based on information contained in the inventories of loom owners and people whose shops appeared on tax lists. The average size of land holding for 12 people identified with weaving shops was 287 acres, compared with the 125 acre average for the population as a whole according to Lucy Simler, "Tenancy in Pennsylvania," p. 551.

71. For example, weaving shops turn up in 1717, CCWI #65; 1756, CCWI #2362; 1770, CCWI #2564; 1772, CCWI #2720; 1773, CCWI #2771; 1774, CCWI #2819; and 1792, CCWI #6401.

72. The women with weaving equipment were: Mary Hutton, d. 1736 (CCWI #553); Martha Hobson, d. 1776 (CCWI #2975); Mary Smith, d. 1743 (CCWI #442). Hanna Shortledge (no probate) and Rebecca Davis, d. 1772 (CCWI #2720), were identified through bequests made in their husbands' wills.

73. Martha Hobson was the only one who specifically mentioned her loom, willing it to her grandson, Francis Hobson.

74. Gullickson, Spinners and Weavers of Auffay, pp. 104-05, finds that in the region of France she examined, women were not recorded formally as weavers until 1808. Although she has little proof, she feels that women probably wove on the equipment of a male relative on an informal basis prior to that time. Small, "Manufacturer or Artisan," p. 802, thinks this was also the case in early eighteenth-century West Riding woolen cloth production.

75. Several ads in the Pennsylvania Gazette suggest that when a weaver died his widow hired someone to continue the business. See for example, Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept. 16-23, 1736 where a widow placed the following ad: "a Hand is wanting in the business of Weaving Hair-Cloth. The proper Loom and all other Utensils belonging to that Business are ready, and a Piece in the Loom half done, by which one not before used to that Sort of weaving may have an Insight of the Method of Working." In this case it is clear that the widow did not know how to do the weaving.

76. When John Pennick, weaver, of Concord township died in 1717, his widow sold the loom to Joseph Townsin, CCWI #47. An ad in the August 13, 1741 issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette, shows that a widow was selling six looms and