THE DELAWARE WOOLEN INDUSTRY by George H. Gibson June, 1963
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THE DELAWARE WOOLEN INDUSTRY by George H. Gibson June, 1963 CONTENTS Page Part 1: Fullers, Carders, and Manufacturers Fullers 2 Carders 6 Manufacturers 12 Mordecai McKinney 12 Caleb Kirk 13 Richard Hambly 14 Joshua and Thomas Gilpin 14 Robert Phillips 15 Du Pont at Louviers 16 Peter Bauduy 19 William Young 20 Alexander V. Murphy 21 Joseph Sykes 22 Joseph and William Maltby 22 Richard Holden 23 John Bancroft 23 Louis Sacriste 24 Robert Hilton 25 Du Pont at Rokeby 26 Henry Clark 29 Thomas Worrall 30 Franklin Manufacturing Company 30 Joseph Dean 30 John Pilling 32 James H. Taylor 34 James G. Knowles 34 William and James Clark 35 Peter F. Causey 35 R.D„ and John Hoffecker 36 Footnotes to Part 1 38 Part 2: Analysis of the Delaware Woolen Industry 47 Capital 48 Business Organization 53 Raw Materials 58 Production of Woolen Cloth and the Use of Power Driven Machines 66 Washing 66 Picking 67 Carding 68 Slubbing 69 Carding and Slubbing 70 Spinning 70 Weaving 72 Fulling Gigging or Napping Shearing Brushing Pressing Dyeing Kinds of Cloth Produced Labor Distributive Agencies Footnotes to Part 2 Bibliography ii ILLUSTRATIONS Following page Victor Marie du Pont de Nemours 16 Louviers 17 Charles I. du Pont 18 Rokeby 26 Worrall's Mill 29 William Dean 31 John Pilling 32 James G. Knowles 34 Don Pedro 59 Burr Picker 67 Original Schofield Card 68 Double Breaker Card 68 Slubbing Billy 69 Spinning Jenny 71 Spinning Jack 72 Original Crompton Loom 74 Narrow Crompton Loom 74 Shearing Machine 75 iii Part 1: Fullers, Carders, and Manufacturers Wool has contributed to the comfort of man for so many centuries that no one really knows when the manufacture of woolen goods began. The textile art, using wool as a basic ingredient, was a universal skill known from China to Peru. Earliest records show that sheep were first domesticated in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. Sheep were a measure of wealth in Arabia and frequently referred to literally and figuratively in the Bible. It was from North Africa that they were introduced into Europe. The Greeks taught the Romans; the Romans taught the Gauls; the Gauls taught the Flemish and the Britons. The Europeans who colo nized North America brought sheep with them. The London Company sent sheep with the first settlers to Jamestown. The Swedes on the Dela ware were shepherds as well as farmers. They had eighty sheep in 1 1663. The ancients used sheep pelts before they manufactured gar ments from the fleece. The Arabians used wool for clothing, bedding, and tenting. The Phoenicians made woolen goods a part of their Medi terranean commerce. Greeks and Romans exported surplus woolen goods from their household production. Rome's most apt pupils were the Flemings, for they became the best known clothmakers. English kings deliberately induced Flemish textile artisans to come to Britain and fostered sheep raising and wool manufacturing for five hundred years. It was largely from Great Britain that Americans learned the tricks of the trade, but each national group had its skill. A Swedish -2- official in Delaware reported in 1693, "Our wives and daughters employ themselves in spinning wool and flax, and many of them in 2 weaving Sheep were essential to farm economy everywhere in colonial America. They were excellent scavengers, cleaning the ground of brush, roots, and rubbish while increasing the fertility of the soil with their excrement. Because the sheep were scrub varieties and half-starved, and because the colonists did not know how to pre pare the meat, sheep were rarely used for food. Great Britain for bade the manufacture of woolen cloth in her colonies except that which was worn by the family which made it. Consequently flocks of sheep in America were small, and the use of wool was restricted to household 3 manufacture. The first breach in household self-sufficiency in making woolen cloth was in the process known as fulling. Woven cloth was harsh and stiff. To soften it and bring the threads closer together required further manipulation. This process consisted of washing the cloth in warm, soapy water, softening the surface by including short wool fibers, beating the cloth with mallets or sticks, and raising the nap with teasels which are the heads of a plant whose flower is covered with sturdy, hooked spines. The process called for strength and dexterity and experience; therefore, it became a specialized part of textile manufacture outside of the home. The fuller used simple machines operated by men, animals, or water. The first fulling mill in America was established at Rowley, -3- Massachusetts, by John Pearson in 1643. Delaware's first known fulling mill was built in 1733. Jonathan Strange acquired a piece of property from John Gregg on February 18, 1733, on the north side of Wilson's Run or Rockland Run, a tributary of Brandywine Creek, in Christiana Hundred. Strange assisted the household manufacture of woolen goods by scouring the raw wool as well as fulling the fin- 4 ished cloth. The next record of a fulling mill in Delaware was made in 1758 when Benjamin Chipman, executor of the estate of James Chipman, sold to John Talbot a half part of a fulling mill on the north side of Mill Creek, a branch of the Broadkiln, a mile west of Milton, Broadkiln 5 Hundred. In 1759 the Pennsylvania Gazette reported that the fulling mill of Archibald Douglass near St. Georges, New Castle County, was 6 robbed of two pieces of cloth on April 18. Joseph Lobb began fulling cloth at a grist mill he bought in 1765 in Mill Creek Hundred on Red 7 Clay Creek near Mt. Cuba. The restrictions on the manufacture of woolen goods brought privation and suffering to the colonists during the Revolutionary War. Medium and high grade goods usually imported from England were not available, and it became patriotic for men of means and position to wear homespun clothing. Because of the dearth of wool and shortage of cloth, soldiers suffered for lack of clothing. Household production was stimulated during the war but declined with the return of British goods after the war. Patriotic organizations promoted domestic manu facturing, but the level of household manufactures of wool soon fell -4- 8 back to pre-war levels. In 1789 the Delaware Society for Encouragement and Pro motion of the Manufactures of the United States of America was formed. On January 9, 1788, a group of "principal inhabitants" agreed to encourage the use of American manufactures. They agreed to kill no lamb for a year to encourage the growth of wool and manu facture of household woolen cloth and agreed to appear on January 1, 1789, at a meeting wearing only clothing produced in the home. The general meeting was a success and the participants formed a perma nent organization "to promote the arts and sciences, to cultivate agriculture, and to increase their manufacture." They wanted es pecially to promote the manufacture of woolen goods and offered prem- 9 iums for the best household goods. The operations of William Allaband on Wharton's Mill Pond on a stream above Camden in East Dover Hundred in 1800 illustrate a point about these fulling mills. Allaband also operated a grist 10 mill and distillery. It was quite likely that a man combined the fulling of cloth with other means of livelihood, for a fuller could never expect to operate a fulling mill the year around. Joshua Johnston and then his son, Samuel, operated a fulling mill on Pike 11 Creek in Mill Creek Hundred from 1804 to 1855. In addition to the fulling mill, he owned a grist mill and a saw mill and raised live- 12 stock and vegetables. A desire for better looking goods and an easier, quicker way of producing them lead to the establishment of more fulling mills in Delaware. A newspaper account stated there were seven fulling mills -5- 13 on Brandywine Creek alone in 1793. Foreign travelers in the United States including Liancourt and writers like Ebeling noted 14 a number of Delaware fulling mills in the 1790's. The sheriff of New Castle County sold a piece of White Clay Creek property in 15 1799 which included a fulling mill. Because skill, strength, and reach were required in weaving, some families simply prepared yarn and left the weaving to specialists. Some itinerant weavers walked from household to household using the yarn the family had prepared and the loom the family possessed. Other weavers set up looms in their own homes or in sheds and wove yarn brought to them. They neither bought yarn nor sold cloth; they worked for a commission of money or cloth. A list of taxables in New Castle Hundred in 1787 included two weavers: David Irwin and 16 James McCullough. George Bush, Collector of the District of Dela- 17 ware, reported twenty-two weavers near Wilmington in 1791. An 1814 directory of Wilmington listed as weavers John and James Brown, Samuel 18 Carnahan, John Crawford, Barney Doras, Samuel Richmond, and John Simpson. In 1823 Niles Register reported that numerous weavers had separate es- 19 tablishments in Wilmington. From 1790 to 1810 British and American manufacturers sold machines in the United States which helped to increase household pro duction of woolen goods by doing more of the finishing processes at the fulling mills. Napping machines for raising the surface of the cloth, shearing machines for cutting the surface of the cloth evenly, and pressing machines for smoothing out wrinkles in the cloth were installed 20 at the mills. -6- After Thomas Hollingsworth took over the fulling mill on Rockland Run about 1790, he added new processes.