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Historic Alexandria Quarterly Historic Alexandria Quarterly Winter 2003 ‘For the People’: Clothing Production and Maintenance at Rose Hill Plantation, Cecil County, Maryland Gloria Seaman Allen, Ph.D. Textile production was central to the economic life and While the General supervised the hired hands and arti- daily well being of many large plantations in the Chesa- sans and contributed to the entertainment of their guests, peake region during the early antebellum period. Nu- it was Martha Forman who had the ultimate responsi- merous steps were required to produce cloth and cloth- bility for their provisioning and maintenance—much ing for families on plantations where the enslaved num- of which involved textile work. Her series of diaries bered fifty or more. These steps included cultivation provides important insights into the complexity of the and harvesting of raw materials, fiber preparation, spin- cloth making process, the centrality of cloth and cloth- ning, dyeing, knitting or weaving, fulling or bleach- ing to the plantation economy, and the almost continu- ing, cutting and sewing plain and fine clothing, mend- ous employment of bound and free labor in plantation ing, and textile maintenance. textile production and maintenance. Between 1814 and 1845 Martha Forman, mistress of Raw Materials and Fiber Preparation Rose Hill in Cecil County, on Maryland’s upper East- General Thomas Marsh Forman raised sheep and grew ern Shore, kept daily records of the plantation activi- flax at his Rose Hill plantation.3 He also grew a small ties that came within her sphere of management.1 She amount of cotton and experimented briefly, but unsuc- began a diary on the cessfully, with sericulture or the production of raw silk day of her marriage by raising silk worms. Rose Hill sheep provided more to General Thomas than enough wool for slave clothing and other purposes. Marsh Forman, a General Forman raised Merino sheep and common widower, who was sheep, and he ranked his one hundred or so sheep by more than twenty the grade of wool they produced.4 His 1818 wool in- years her senior. Al- ventory indicated that the first quality wool, probably though the Formans’ Merino, was intended for flannel, second quality for marriage was child- cassimer, third quality for Negro cloth, and fourth qual- less, Rose Hill plan- ity for Negro stockings.5 tation was a center of activity with nearly General Forman’s sheep were sheared in late May. fifty resident bonds- Martha Forman (1785–1864), During June, July, and August enslaved women washed diarist and mistress of Rose Hill men and a continuous the dirty wool, picked it clean of dirt, straws and burrs, Plantation, Cecil County, stream of visitors and sorted, and greased it.6 The wool was then sent out to Maryland. itinerant workmen be machine carded and rolled at Garrett’s Mill nearby Photograph courtesy of the who frequently on the Bohemia River. Hand picking wool was a time Historical Society of Cecil stayed for periods of County, Elkton, Maryland. consuming job in the hot months of summer. Martha weeks or months.2 Forman wrote in 1817, “This day sent 179 pounds of This issue sponsored by Mr. Oscar P. Ryder picked wool to be carded, which with 130 sent before, sew. They came to Rose Hill to live for short periods is 327 this season. We shall this day finish picking our of time or until the season’s spinning was completed.10 wool and I am heartily glad, it is a most tedious job.”7 The women spun rolls of carded wool into singles and Flax was grown successfully at Rose Hill for most of plied yarn during the fall months starting in Septem- the period of the Forman diaries. The cultivation of ber. The wool yarn for linsey and woolen cloth was flax required little land, but considerable labor, more ready in time to weave for winter clothing for the Rose than any other natural fiber. Field hands, all of them Hill community. The women started spinning tow or enslaved, sowed flaxseed in late March and April and coarse flax in December and January and generally fin- pulled the ripe flax in July. They rippled or stripped ished by the end of February to be ready for the weav- the seed from the flax and spread the plant out in a ing of summer clothing.11 Fine tow, linen, and cotton field for several weeks to water rot the leaves and soften spinning took place at odd times, and as needed. the fibers. Once the desired degree of decay had been reached, men dried the flax over open fires, pounded For the most part, spinning at Rose Hill was handwork the stalks with a flax brake, a toothed instrument, and that required good coordination, concentration, and en- beat or scutched them with a knife to separate the outer durance. The spinners used wool and flax wheels; the woody fibers from the inner ones. Following this step, great wool or walking wheel for wool and cotton fi- women repeatedly pulled the fibers through hackles, bers; the small treadle wheel for wool, flax, and cot- or combs with sharp wire teeth, to further separate bro- ton.12 General Forman experimented briefly with a spin- ken strands, coarse tow, and waste from longer or line ning machine or “jenny.” On July 9, 1816, Martha fibers. wrote, “Mr. Garret brought home our carded wool, and at the same time a machine with eight spindles for spin- The cultivation of cotton was not well suited to the ning wool, cost 20$.”13 Rachel Antigua, a house ser- northern Chesapeake region of Cecil County where vant and one of Martha’s best textile workers, began to early frosts shortened the growing season.8 However, spin on the machine at that time. She evidently con- between 1814 and 1830, General Forman planted small tinued to use the spinning jenny during the next year, amounts of cotton to be used for slave clothing. He for Martha noted in September 1817, “Rachel spins 8 augmented his production by purchasing cotton balls, pounds of wool a day on the machine.”14 cotton thread, and domestic cotton yard goods from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and local merchants and mills. Hand spinning at Rose Hill reached its peak around From the 1830s on, cotton cloth supplemented his linen 1820. Between 1814 and 1825, Martha Forman re- and tow cloth, and cotton fibers replaced flax in the corded the activities of seven enslaved spinners and production of linsey. At Rose Hill cottonseed was seven free, white spinners. In June 1818, she wrote, “I planted in May; cotton was harvested in late fall and made one thousand four and a half yards of homespun cleaned in February and March. “Servants” or “house of different kinds this year.”15 As was customary in per- girls,” as Martha Forman referred to the enslaved sonal documents of the period, the plantation mistress women and girls who worked in the mansion house, took credit for the work of her slaves and others whose picked husks and seeds from the small crop of cotton labor she controlled. Rosalie Stier Calvert, mistress of bolls, which in 1827 yielded only eleven pounds of Riversdale plantation in Prince George’s County, Mary- usable cotton.9 All seed removal was done by hand land, wrote to a family member in 1805, “Another of rather than in a gin. The clean cotton was then carded, my diversions is to make cloth for the negroes,” and in spun, and frequently dyed blue for striped dress goods. an 1807 letter she wrote, “all my servants are dressed in a very pretty cloth of my own manufacture.”16 In her Spinning earlier correspondence, she added as an afterthought, Rose Hill women spun wool, flax, and cotton fibers “much of the manipulation is done by some little girls.” into yarn, thread, and candlewick for a variety of end uses. Several free white women, but never the mis- Dyeing tress, spun along side enslaved women or in their own Martha Forman closely supervised the dyeing of wool houses. Martha Forman also employed young girls, fibers for Rose Hill cloth.17 She probably did much of probably daughters of middling farmers, to spin and the dyeing herself for she rarely noted the involvement 2 of others in the dyeing process.18 Each fall Martha used task. At age twelve, Harriet could “knit a man’s stock- large stoneware crocks, purchased with her butter ing in a day.”22 By contemporary accounts, she was a money, to dye skeins of woolen yarn deep indigo blue. diligent worker. Landon Carter recorded in his diary The yarn was intended as the filler, or weft, in linsey in 1776 his wife’s calculation of the time it took her to used for the women’s dresses and needed to be uni- knit their son’s stockings. “Mrs. Carter told me her day’s formly blue in color to produce a solid blue cloth. Men work was 150 rounds of 185 stitches on a stocking And at Rose Hill dressed in brown linsey or brown cloth, it took her 6 days to make one stocking at that rate So depending on their status and occupation; however, that the number of Stitches in one Stockin must be . Martha Forman did not mention dyeing fibers brown. 166,500.”23 Harriet’s small fingers must have moved at an incredible rate to complete the task of one stock- Wool absorbs dye more readily than other fibers, and ing in one day—one sixth of the time it took Mrs. Carter. dyeing wool in skeins, while tricky to produce evenly colored yarn, could be accomplished by a skilled ama- teur dyer.
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