THE IVORY SERIES
_Each, 16mo, gilt top, 75 cents_
AMOS JUDD. By J. A. Mitchell, Editor of “Life”
IA. A Love Story. By Q. [Arthur T. Quiller-Couch]
THE SUICIDE CLUB. By Robert Louis Stevenson
IRRALIE’S BUSHRANGER. By E. W. Hornung
A MASTER SPIRIT. By Harriet Prescott Spofford
MADAME DELPHINE. By George W. Cable
ONE OF THE VISCONTI. By Eva Wilder Brodhead
A BOOK OF MARTYRS. By Cornelia Atwood Pratt
A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH. By E. W. Hornung
THE MAN WHO WINS. By Robert Herrick
AN INHERITANCE. By Harriet Prescott Spofford
THE OLD GENTLEMAN OF THE BLACK STOCK. By Thomas Nelson Page
LITERARY LOVE LETTERS AND OTHER STORIES. By Robert Herrick
A ROMANCE IN TRANSIT. By Francis Lynde
IN OLD NARRAGANSETT. By Alice Morse Earle.
SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER. By J. V. Hadley.
_Other Volumes to be announced_
IN OLD NARRAGANSETT
_ROMANCES AND REALITIES_
BY
ALICE MORSE EARLE
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK, 1898
Copyright, 1898, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
FOREWORD
_Some of these stories of old Narragansett are familiar fireside tales
to those who have lived in that picturesque land; some are but vague
traditions, others summer dreams; a few are family chronicles; still
others are outlined in that interesting memoir, Thomas R. Hazard’s
“Recollections of the Olden Times,” or in Updike’s “Narragansett
Church.” Old Narragansett was, properly, all the lands occupied by the
Narragansett Indians at the coming of the English. Narragansett is
now, popularly, the coast sweep of the western shore of Narragansett
Bay from Wickford to Point Judith. In 1685 Narragansett was made a
separate government apart from Rhode Island, and was called the Kings
Province. When reunited with Rhode Island this was changed to King’s
County. For many years, and by some old people to-day, it is called
the South County, but its legal name is Washington County, which was
given it in 1781; Washington being a more agreeable and tolerable name
at that date to loyal Americans than King’s. Narragansett was owned by
a comparatively small number of persons, and estates were large, one
family owned a tract nine miles long and three wide. Thomas Stanton had
a “lordship” four and a half miles long and two wide. Colonel Champlin
owned two thousand acres, Thomas Hazard twelve thousand acres. Farms of
five, six, even ten miles square existed._
_Thus the conditions of life in colonial Narragansett were widely
different from those of other New England colonies. The establishment
of and adherence to the Church of England, and the universal
prevalence of African slavery, evolved a social life resembling
that of the Virginian plantation rather than of the Puritan farm.
It was a community of many superstitions, to which the folk-customs
of the feast-days of the English Church, the evil communications of
witch-seeking Puritan neighbors, the voodooism of the negro slaves,
the pow wows of the native red men, all added a share and infinite
variety. It was a plantation of wealth, of vast flocks and herds, of
productive soil, of great crops, of generous living; all these are
vanished from the life there to-day, but still the fields are smiling
and the lakes and the bay are blue and beautiful as of yore; and a
second prosperity is dawning in the old Kings Province in the universal
establishment therein of happy summer-homes._
_In memory of many perfect days spent on Narragansett roads and lanes,
of days in Narragansett woods or on the shore, these pages have been
written._
_ALICE MORSE EARLE._
_WICKFORD, RHODE ISLAND,
Midsummer Eve, 1897._
CONTENTS
PAGE
_A Narragansett Elopement_ _1_
_Narragansett Weavers_ _23_
_Where Three Towns Meet_ _51_
_Tuggie Bannocks’s Moonack_ _63_
_A Black Politician_ _77_
_The Witch Sheep_ _103_
_The Crusoes of the Noon-House_ _121_
_The Doctor’s Pie-Plates_ _139_
_My Delft Apothecary Jars_ _151_
_The Dancing Turkey_ _169_
_Cuddymonk’s Ghost_ _181_
A NARRAGANSETT ELOPEMENT
Four miles north of Narragansett Pier lies the old South Ferry, from
whence for over a century ran ferry-boats to a landing on Conanicut
Island. About a mile farther north there stands on Boston Neck an
ancient willow-shaded, gambrel-roofed, weather-beaten house which in
the latter part of the eighteenth century was the scene of a sadly
romantic event. It was built by Rowland Robinson in the first half of
the century--in 1746--and was originally one hundred and ten feet long,
as the stone foundations still show. The kitchen and negro quarters
have been demolished, and the present structure has a front of sixty
feet. The rooms within are models of the simple style of architecture
of that day. The staircase is specially beautiful with its gracefully
turned balusters and curious drop ornaments, and its deep-worn steps of
bass-wood. The walls of all the rooms are wainscoted in a substantial
manner, and the fireplaces are ornamented with blue and white Dutch
tiles. The heavy timbers and rafters--all cut on the place--have
not sagged an inch with the weight of years. Over the fireplace in
the dining-room is a panel bearing a smoke-darkened painting which
represents a deer-hunt that occurred on the Robinson place while the
house was being built. The riders in this picture appear to be standing
in their stirrups instead of sitting on their saddles. The great attic
in which the slaves are said to have slept contains now a picturesque
litter of old sea-chests, spinning-wheels, clock-reels, wool-cards,
flax-brakes, yarn-winders, saddles, and pillions; and in the beams of
the roof are great iron hooks to which--it is whispered--the slaves
of olden times were tied when they received their floggings. They are
with much more probability the loom-hooks which were used by weavers
when weaving cloth on an old hand-loom. The handsome great west room is
known as the Lafayette Chamber, it having been occupied for some weeks
by the Marquis de Lafayette during the Revolutionary War; and on panes
of glass, still whole after a century’s use, are the names of French
officers, scratched on with the writers’ diamond rings.
The house abounds in cupboards--tall, narrow cupboards high up over
the chimney, low, broad cupboards under the window-seats, medicine
cupboards and pot cupboards, triangular corner cupboards, and, in
the parlor, one beautifully proportioned apse-shaped china-cupboard
which is ornamented with carved “sunbursts” and scalloped and serrated
shelves, and is closed with glass doors to show the treasures and
beauties within. But in “Unfortunate Hannah’s” chamber is the most
famous cupboard of all, for in that narrow and shallow retreat a
beautiful daughter of Rowland Robinson hid her lover when she heard the
approaching footsteps of her irascible father on the staircase leading
to her room.
Rowland Robinson was a typical Narragansett planter--wealthy, proud,
and imperious. Tall and portly, ruddy of face, he showed in his
dress and carriage his great wealth and high position. A coat of
fine dark cloth or velvet with silver buttons was worn over a long
yellow waistcoat with great pockets and flaps; violet or brown velvet
knee-breeches with handsome top-boots, or silk stockings with buckled
shoes; lace-frilled shirts; a great beaver cocked hat looped up with
cords over his powdered hair--this attire gave him a comely and elegant
presence. His character may be given in a few words by quoting the
wife of Hon. William Hunter, minister to Brazil. She wrote in her
diary sixty years ago her personal recollection of him. “He was of
violent passions, which was characteristic of the Robinsons, but of
benevolent, noble nature.” Many stories are told of his impetuous
generosity and kindly impulsiveness, none being more characteristic
than his action when his first cargo of slaves came from the Guinea
coast. Slave-dealing was such a universal practice at that date among
wealthy residents of Narragansett and Newport that it was a commonplace
business enterprise for Rowland Robinson, when he was building his new
house, to send a ship to Africa for a cargo of negroes, intending to
keep the most promising ones for his own household and farm servants,
and to sell the remainder. But when the ship landed at South Ferry, and
the forlorn, wretched, feeble men and women disembarked, he burst into
tears and vowed that not one should be sold. He kept them all in his
own household, where they were always kindly treated. He never again
sent a vessel to Africa to engage in the slave-trade, though one negro
of royal birth--Queen Abigail--was so happy in her Narragansett home,
that with Rowland Robinson’s consent and his liberal assistance she
returned to her home in Africa, found her son--the negro prince--and
brought him to America, where he became Mr. Robinson’s faithful
body-servant.
The wealthy planter had other sources of income than slave-trading. He
owned great ships that engaged in general commerce. He had an immense
dairy and made fine Rhode Island cheese from the milk of his beautiful
“blanket-cows.” It was his ambition to have one hundred of these lovely
black-and-white animals, but it is a matter of tradition that, while
he could keep ninety-nine readily enough, when he bought or raised
the hundredth cow, one of the ninety-nine sickened and died, or was
lost through accident, and thus the number still fell short. Great
quantities of grain and hay did he also raise on his fertile farm;
and besides the grain and cheese that he shipped to the West Indies
he also sold to the wealthy colonists many Narragansett pacers--swift
horses of the first distinctively American breed. These pacers all came
from one sire, “Old Snip,” who it is said was of Andalusian birth and
was found swimming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, was hauled
on board a trading-ship and was carried to Narragansett, where he was
allowed to run wild on the Point Judith tract. These sure-footed pacers
had a peculiar gait; they did not sway their rider from side to side,
nor jolt him up and down, but permitted him to sit quietly, and thus
endure without fatigue a long journey. In those carriageless days,
when nearly all travel was by saddle and pillion, the broad-backed,
easy-going Narragansett pacers were in such demand that they brought
high prices and proved a good source of income.
Three children were born to the builder of this beautiful colonial
home: William Robinson, who died in Newport in 1804, in a house on the
corner of Broadway and Mann Avenue, and two daughters, Mary and Hannah.
Gay festivities had these young people in the hospitable great house,
especially when a demure young Quaker cousin was sent to them to live
for awhile in order to break up a romantic love-affair of hers with
a young French officer. Count Rochambeau was a guest at her father’s
house, and too many opportunities for love-making were found when the
young Frenchman came to report to his commanding officer.
Gayest and loveliest of all the beauties throughout Narragansett
was fair Hannah Robinson--Unfortunate Hannah. Much testimony of her
extraordinary beauty has descended to us, one story being of her
meeting with Crazy Harry Babcock, that reckless dare-devil of a soldier
whose feats of valor by land and sea were known all over Europe as
well as in America. This extraordinary man, during a visit to England,
was invited to the palace and introduced to the royal family. When the
queen extended her hand to him to be kissed, he sprang briskly from his
knees, exclaiming: “May it please your majesty, in my country, when we
salute a beautiful woman we kiss her lips, not her hand,” and with the
words he seized the astonished queen by the shoulders and impressed
on her lips a rousing smack. Upon his return to America he went to
Narragansett for the avowed purpose of “seeing the prettiest woman in
Rhode Island.” As he entered the parlor of Rowland Robinson’s house
fair Hannah rose to meet him, and the crazy colonel, as she extended
her hand to greet him, dropped on his knee with a look of intense
admiration, saying, in the stilted words of the times: “Pray permit one
who has kissed unrebuked the lips of the proudest queen on earth to
press for a moment the hand of an angel from heaven!”
The great wealth and luxurious manner of living of the opulent
Narragansett planters was shown in no way more plainly than in the
manner in which they educated their children. They spared no pains nor
expense to obtain the best masters and teachers. Rowland Robinson sent
his daughter to Newport to receive instruction from Madame Osborne,
whose fame as a teacher was known throughout America, and whose
“Memoirs” form the dullest book in the English language. At this school
Hannah met the handsome lover who was to have such an influence over
her life. Pierre Simond, or Peter Simons as was most unromantically
Anglicized his name, was a scion of a French Huguenot family, who
taught music and French in Madame Osborne’s school. From the moment the
young couple met they were lovers. Both knew, however, how hopeless it
was to think of obtaining Mr. Robinson’s consent to a marriage which
would appear to him so unequal; they therefore kept their love a secret.
As the time approached for Hannah’s return to her home in Narragansett,
the lovers were in despair at the thought of separation, for they
knew their unhappiness could not be mitigated even by the exchange
of love-letters. At this juncture the young music-teacher managed to
obtain a position as private tutor in the family of Colonel Gardiner,
who lived only two miles from Hannah’s home and who was her uncle.
It can easily be divined that when once in Narragansett the happy
lovers found many opportunities of meeting, which were frequently
brought about by the romantic and easy-going colonel, and were not
hindered by Hannah’s mother when she discovered her daughter’s
love-affair. Though Mrs. Robinson would not give her approval she
tacitly gave her aid by helping to conceal the lovers’ meetings from
Rowland Robinson; and it was with her knowledge that the lover came to
Hannah’s chamber, where he often had to be concealed in the friendly
cupboard.
When Peter Simons could not enter the Robinson house he stood by his
true-love’s window under a great lilac-bush, which is still growing,
sturdy and unbroken under the weight of a century of years. In the
concealing shadow of the lilac-bush words of love might be whispered to
the fair girl who leaned from the window, or letters might be exchanged
with comparative safety.
But true love ran no smoother in the eighteenth century than in the
nineteenth, and when one night a fair hand dropped a tender billet into
the gloom of the lilac-bush, old Rowland Robinson chanced to open the
door of his house and he saw the white messenger descend. Speechless
with suspicion and rage he rushed to the lilac-bush and thrust his
buckthorn stick into it with vigorous blows until a man ran out into
the darkness, whom the irate father in the second’s glimpse recognized
as the “wretched French dancing-master” who taught his nephews.
The horrified and disgusted anger of Rowland Robinson and the scene
that ensued within doors can well be imagined; little peace or
happiness was there for Hannah after her father’s discovery. Updike,
in his “History of the Narragansett Church,” says of her life at
this time: “If she walked, her movements were watched; if she rode,
a servant was ordered to be in constant attendance; if a visit was
contemplated, her father immediately suspected it was only a pretext
for an arranged interview; and even after departure, if the most
trifling circumstance gave color to suspicion, he would immediately
pursue and compel her to return. In one instance she left home to visit
her aunt in New London; her father soon afterward discovered from his
windows a vessel leaving Newport and taking a course toward the same
place. Although the vessel and the persons on board were wholly unknown
to him, his jealousies were immediately aroused. Conjecturing it was
Mr. Simons intending to fulfil an arrangement previously made, he
hastened to New London, arrived a few hours only after his daughter,
and insisted on her instant return. No persuasions or argument could
induce him to change his determination, and she was compelled to return
with him.”
Though Rowland Robinson was firm in his determination and constant
in his action to prevent the lovers from meeting, Hannah--the true
daughter of her father--was equally determined not to give up her
sweetheart; and as the Narragansett neighbors, like the rest of the
world, “dearly loved a lover,” they gladly assisted the romance by
exchanging letters and arranging meetings for the lovers. Months of
harassing suspicions and angry words at home, and frightened meetings
with her lover away from home, told so upon Hannah’s health that her
mother finally permitted to be carried into execution a long-planned
scheme of elopement. It was finally arranged through the agency and
assistance of a young friend of Hannah’s--Miss Belden--and the ever
sentimental colonel-uncle.
Invitations for a great ball had been sent out all over Narragansett,
and to many in Boston, Providence, and Newport. It was to be given by
Mrs. Updike, Hannah’s aunt. She lived eight miles north of Rowland
Robinson’s home, in the old historic house which is still standing and
is now known as Cocumcussuc. A portion of it was the first house or
fort built by the English in Narragansett in the year 1636. Though
Hannah’s father was unwilling to allow his daughter out of his sight,
he at last consented that both Hannah and Mary should go to their
aunt’s ball. They set out on horseback, accompanied by faithful Prince,
the son of Queen Abigail, and were met, as had been arranged, in the
thick woods on the top of Ridge Hill, by Mr. Simons with a closed
carriage. Into this conveyance Hannah entered with her lover, in spite
of her sister’s tears and Prince’s frantic appeals, and rode off to
Providence, where the eloping couple were married.
When the news of Hannah’s disobedience came to the knowledge of Rowland
Robinson, his rage and disgust knew no bounds. He forbade his family
ever to communicate with Hannah again; and knowing well that she must
have been assisted in carrying out her plans to elope, he offered a
large reward to anyone who would make known to him the names of the
persons who had aided her escape.
It would seem that the fair bride should be called Fortunate Hannah,
since she managed to evade her father’s vigilance and wed her
ardent French lover, but alas! Peter Simons, like many another
hero of an elopement, did not prove worthy of the great sacrifice.
Disappointed through the implacable anger of Rowland Robinson in the
hope of obtaining any of his wealth, the unprincipled husband soon
neglected his lovely wife and at last deserted her for days and weeks.
Broken-hearted, alone, and poor, the unfortunate girl began to fail
rapidly in health, and spent many weary, lonely days in her wretched
home in Providence, having for her only companion her dog Marcus, that
had been secretly sent to her by her mother from her Narragansett home.
In the meantime her sister, Mary Robinson, had died of consumption;
and her mother, worn out by grief, had completely failed in health.
Her father, though outwardly stern and unforgiving, was evidently
exceedingly unhappy at the alarming news of his daughter’s state of
health; and at last, of his own accord, sent to live with her and care
for her the negro maid who had attended her in her happy girlhood. He
also conveyed to her the message that she might come home and would be
warmly welcomed, provided she would reveal to him the names of those
who assisted in her elopement. Her compliance with this condition was,
he said, absolutely imperative.
On receiving this message Hannah wrote in answer, with trembling hand,
a most affectionate letter, stating firmly that the sentiments of
honor which he himself had both taught and transmitted to her forbade
her betraying the confidence of those who had aided her and offended
him. Mr. Robinson eagerly opened the letter, but his face changed when
he read her decision, and he tossed the sheet to her mother with the
contemptuous remark, “Then let the foolish thing die where she is!”
As weeks passed the accounts of Hannah’s health grew more alarming
still, and it was evident that a fierce struggle between love and
pride was taking place in the unhappy father’s breast; one day he rose
suddenly from the dinner-table, jumped upon his horse, and saying to
his wife that he should be away from home for a day or two, started on
the thirty-five-mile ride to Providence. He remained overnight at the
Updike farm and reached his daughter’s house in Providence at noon.
Without dismounting he rapped on the door with his riding-whip. Full
of joy at the sight of her old master and at the thought of the happy
reconciliation, the negro maid hastened to the door with the entreaty
that the welcome visitor would come at once to the poor invalid’s
chamber. “Ask your mistress,” said Rowland Robinson, “whether she is
now ready to comply with her father’s request to know the names of
her fellow-conspirators, and say that if she is, he will come in, but
on no other conditions.” Poor Hannah, torn with a thousand emotions,
still clung to her decision not to betray her friends, and her father,
without another word, rode away to the Updike farm. For several weeks
the stubborn and unhappy father, unable to live without news of his
sick daughter, rode at intervals of two or three days from Narragansett
to Providence, knocked at Hannah’s door, asked for her health, and left
without another word.
At last, her friends who had helped in her elopement, hearing of her
father’s firm decision, which barred all reconciliation, insisted upon
her revealing to him their names and the true story; and when Rowland
Robinson next rode up to his daughter’s door he received the welcome
message that she would see him and tell him all. When he entered that
barren chamber all thought of discovering her closely guarded secret
fled at once from his thoughts as he gazed at the wasted form of the
once beautiful girl. He knelt by her bedside and wept aloud in anguish
and remorse. As soon as he recovered his composure he at once rode to
his home, from whence he despatched to Providence in a fast-sailing
sloop four of his strongest and trustiest negro men, and a hand-litter
for the sick, which was, at that time of rough roads and few carriages,
an indispensable article in every well-appointed Narragansett
household. Dusty, travel-stained, and tired, without waiting for a
night’s rest he at once jumped upon a fresh horse and, attended by
Prince, who was mounted and led a horse for Hannah’s maid, poor Rowland
Robinson started for the last time to ride to his sick daughter’s door.
Upon a lovely morning in June, the four strong negroes, bearing the
litter upon which lay the sick girl, with her father and faithful
Prince riding on either side, slowly wended their way to poor Hannah’s
early home. Those who know the beauty of sunny Narragansett in early
June, when the roads are everywhere overhung with the graceful,
sweet-scented blossoms of slender locust-trees, when the roadsides are
one luxuriant, blooming garden of lovely wild flowers, and the fields
are sweet with rich clover, can feel the strong and painful contrast
which the sad figure of the dying girl must have formed to the glowing
life around.
When the spot was reached on Ridge Hill where Hannah had seen for the
last time her sister Mary, Prince saw that she covered her face with
her hands and cried. One other pathetic incident is told by “Shepherd
Tom” of the homeward journey. Though on every side lay a glory of
spring flowers, poor Hannah, with thoughts that no one can fathom,
asked her father to pick for her and lay on her breast a withered sprig
of the pale blossom called life-everlasting, which had bloomed and died
the year before.
At last the painful journey was ended; of the sad meeting between
mother and daughter, and of the sorrowful faces of the faithful
servants, it is needless to write in detail.
That night a whip-poor-will--the bird believed throughout Narragansett
to be the harbinger of death--perched on the lilac-bush under the
window of the chamber where once again slept Unfortunate Hannah; and
throughout the long dark hours sounded gloomily in the father’s ears
the sad, ominous cry of “Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!” The following
day poor Hannah died.
Again did four strong men bear on their shoulders the form of the once
beautiful girl, as they passed under the branches of the sweet-scented
lilac to the grave near the old house where still is shown the
headstone that marks the last resting-place of Unfortunate Hannah
Robinson.
NARRAGANSETT WEAVERS
During the first years of this century there could be found in every
English town, village, and hamlet many hand-looms and many weavers who
on these looms wove for their neighbors and for small cloth-jobbers
strong homespun woollen stuffs, rag-carpets, woollen sheets, cotton
and wool bed-spreads, flannels, coarse linen and tow, heavy cotton
cloth and fine table and bed linen. These hand-looms lingered in use
till about 1840. So universal was then the extinction of hand-weaving
through the vast growth of power-loom manufacture and of spinning by
steam-spindle, and so sudden and complete the destruction and vanishing
of all the old-time implements and machines, that when, ten years ago,
under the stimulus of Ruskin’s fiery appeal for the revivifying of
hand-spinning and hand-weaving, these household arts were again started
in Westmoreland, but a single linen-loom could be found for the work.
In the American colonies hand-weaving was also a universal industrial
art. In no part of the country has the industry lingered longer than
in old Narragansett. In many old New England towns single hand-looms
can be found, some in running order, and with owners capable of running
them to make rag-carpets. Others are still standing, cobwebbed and
dusty, in attic lofts, lean-to chambers, woodsheds, or barns, with no
one to set the piece or fill the shuttles. In Narragansett I know a
score of old looms in good running order, though, save in one instance,
set only for weaving rag-carpets; in many cases the owners, who do
not make weaving a trade, will not “start them up” for weaving less
than a hundred yards of carpeting. This is a long strip for a room
in a cottage or farm-house, so neighbors frequently join together in
ordering these carpets, and in company send vast rolls of the filling,
which is made of inch-wide strips of cloth of all colors and materials
sewed in long strips. Within a few years these old hand-looms have been
used for weaving rag-portières made of silk strips.
Weaving was a very respectable occupation. It is told that the regicide
Judge Whalley lived to great old age in Narragansett--one hundred
and three years--and earned his living by weaving. The son of the
Congregational minister at Narragansett, Dr. Torrey, was a weaver. The
province was full of weavers. Miss Hazard gives the names of many in
her “College Tom.” With all the spinning-jennies for spinning a vast
supply of thread and yarn, there were no power-looms in Narragansett
till 1812. Hand-looms made up all the yarn and thread that were
produced. The prince of Narragansett weavers was Martin Read. In 1761
he was baptized in St. Paul’s Church as “Martin Read, an adult, the
Parish Clerk.” He was a devoted lover of the church and was sexton
for many years. He led the singing, and it is said that under his
leadership the _Venite_ was first chanted in America. During the
troubled and rector-less days of the Revolution, he helped the parish
work along by reading morning-prayers and the funeral-service for the
dead.
He was apprenticed, an orphan, at seven years of age to a
diaper-weaver, and served till he was of age, with one term only of
schooling; but he was ambitious and read eagerly instructive books,
especially on weaving and kindred arts. He married the daughter of an
Irish weaver, and soon had journeymen and apprentices, whom he taught
to sing as they wove; and when they did not sing the men whistled the
airs, and with singing and whistling the work speeded.
This singing at the loom was not a peculiarity of Martin Read’s. We
know the exclamation of Falstaff: “I would I were a weaver, I could
sing Psalms and all manner of songs.” Nares says weavers were generally
good singers, and that as they sat at their work they practised
part-singing. Many of the weavers in Queen Elizabeth’s day were Flemish
Calvinists and therefore given to psalm-singing, hence Falstaff’s
reference.
One weaver, named James Maxwell, wrote some “Weaver’s Meditations”
in rhyme in 1756. The frontispiece of his book--his portrait at his
loom--is thus inscribed:
“Lo, how ’twixt heaven and earth I swing,
And whilst the shuttle swiftly flies,
With cheerful heart I work and sing,
And envy none beneath the skies.”
Martin Read reared his family well, and in the Episcopal Church.
His son, Rev. Dr. Read, preached for many years at Christ’s Church
in Poughkeepsie. He wove coverlets, blankets, broadcloth, flannel,
worsted, linen, tow-cloth, and calamanco. This last was a glossy
woollen twilled fabric, sometimes woven in a pattern in the warp. James
Fontaine, a Huguenot weaver, says it was made of a fine double-twisted
worsted. It was much used for the nightgowns and banians worn by
substantial citizens of the day, and for women’s winter-gowns.
Other goods made by Weaver Read were duroy, durant, and crocus, a
coarse tow-stuff for servants’ wear. This word, crocus, still may be
heard in Virginia, and perhaps elsewhere in the South, where it was
more and longer used than in Narragansett.
Martin Read lived near the old church he so dearly loved, and a sightly
spot it was for a home. Still standing beside the church foundation,
the site where the church first stood, is the deserted house in which
Martin Read lived and wove and whistled and sung. On the road near his
home lives to-day the last of the old-time weavers, one who can weave
woollen and linen stuffs. Hand-weaving is not with him an accidental
industrial makeshift, but his every-day occupation and means of
livelihood. He learned to weave from one of Martin Read’s apprentices.
His low, weather-beaten house, set in a close-walled garden, is one
of the most picturesque in old Narragansett. We entered from a glory
of midsummer sunlight into a cool, pale-green light which penetrated
the rooms through the heavy shadows of the rugged old cedar-trees that
overhung the roof and the ancient lilacs that pressed close to the
windows.
There has ever been associated in my mind with the trade of weaving the
pale and sickly appearance and bearing of many English mill weavers;
and, though ever of country life, this Yankee weaver was no exception
to the rule. His skin, of extreme delicacy, was pale, yet suffused at
times with that semi-transparent flush which is seldom seen save on
those whose life is wholly indoors. His hair and beard were long and
white, and had evidently been light-brown before they were white; his
bright blue eyes looked pleasantly and intelligently out from the wisps
of white hair. His visible attire was a clean, but collarless, white
shirt and a pair of blue overalls; his feet were bare. We mounted with
him the narrow enclosed staircase to the loom-loft.
There was such a flood of color out of doors, the fields and trees
were so green, the tangle of larkspurs in the garden was so blue, the
sunbeams so radiant, that the attic seemed but a dull abiding-place
for a summer’s day; but as the eye grew accustomed to the dimmer light
and learned to avoid the piercing arrows of sunshine that burned in
through the heart-shaped holes in the shutters and made every mote of
wavering dust in their path a point of unbearable glitter, then the
attic seemed quiet and peaceful, and its shadows were grateful; and
even the bang, bang of the loom when it was started up was not a garish
rattle. Heaps of gay woollen yarns lay under the eaves, and a roll or
two of rag-carpeting and strips of worn-out bed-coverlets of various
patterns were hung on the beams or piled in heaps. There were vast
boxes of cotton twine; and many yarn-beams ready wound, and swifts and
quilling-wheels and “scarnes,” many in number, thrust under the garret
eaves. Among the discarded wool-wheels and flax-wheels heaped high in
the corner--obsolete before their fellow, the hand-loom--I did not peer
deep. Though neglected, they are jealously treasured, for “that was
grandma’s foot-wheel,” and “Aunt Eunice used that wool-wheel sixty-two
year,” showed that what seemed to me useless lumber was haloed with
association and tradition. I have never seen or felt elsewhere any such
picture, any such atmosphere of an industrial life that is forever
past, as that old-time weaving. The dim half-light of the loom-room and
the darker garret beyond; the ancient chairs that thrust out a broken
arm, and tables that put forth a claw-foot from the shadows; the low
buzzing of hornets that fluttered against the upper skylight or hung
in dull clusters on the window-frame--hornets so dull, so feeble,
so innocuous in their helplessness that they seemed the ancients of
their day; the eerie clamor of swallows in the chimney; the pungent
aroma of “dry, forgotten herbs,” that swayed in the summer wind from
every rafter; and the weaver, pale and silent, laboriously weaving his
slow-growing web with a patience of past ages of workers, a patience
so foreign to our present high-pressure and double-speed rates that he
seemed a century old, the very spirit of colonial, nay, of mediæval
days.
There was a monotonous yet well-controlled precision in this weaver’s
work that was most soothing, and that seems to be a characteristic
influence of the homespun industries. It was felt by Wordsworth and
voiced in his sonnet:
“Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend
Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute.”
This precision in work is that of the skilled hand and thinking brain
controlling the machine, not the vast power of steam relentlessly
crowding the overworked body and dulled brain.
By this hand-weaving, as if to prove Ruskin’s glowing and inspiring
assertions, this weaver earns an independent living in intelligent
work, of reasonable hours, in a comfortable house, and in conditions
favorable to health--a vast contrast to the overworked, unhealthy,
poorly fed, stultified factory-worker. His business has so prospered
of late that he has had a trade-card printed at the village printer’s
like any other independent manufacturer. From it I learn that he
weaves rag-carpets, bed-coverlets, and hap-harlots. Hap-harlots,
forsooth! could anyone believe that obsolete word had been used since
Holinshed’s day? He wrote in 1570, in his “Chronicles of England,” etc.:
“Our fathers have lien full oft upon straw pallets or rough mats,
covered onlie with a sheet under coverlets made of dagswain or
hap-harlots, and a good round log under their heads instead of a
bolster.”
Yet here have been Narragansett weavers weaving hap-harlots, and
sleeping under hap-harlots, and speaking of hap-harlots as though three
centuries ago were as yesterday. I presume they have made dagswains
also, since there still exists bills of Narragansett shepherds for
dagging sheep.
The old-time cotton and wool bed-spreads or coverlets, seen of old
on every four-post bedstead, he now sells for portières and bathroom
rugs, as well as for bed and couch spreads. They are woven in simple
geometric patterns, just as in the times of the ancient Britons, when
the wools of the weft were dyed with woad and broom. The patterns
are nearly all over a century old. He has a worn pattern-book with
bewildering rules for setting the heddles for over fifty designs.
Quaint of name are the patterns: “chariot-wheels and church-windows,”
is a bold, large design; “church-steps,” a simpler one; “bachelors’
fancy,” “devil’s fancy,” “five doves in a row,” “shooting-star,”
“rising sun,” “rail fence,” “green veils,” offer little in their
designs to give reason for their names. “Whig rose,” “Perry’s Victory,”
and “Lady Washington’s fancy,” show an historical influence in naming.
“Orange-peel” is simply a series of oblong hexagons honeycombed
together. “All summer and all winter” was similar. “Bricks and blocks”
is evenly checkered. “Capus diaper” is more a complicated design for
weaving damask linen, taking five harnesses. Floral names are common,
such as “Dutch tulip,” “rose in bloom,” “pansies in the wilderness,”
“five snow-balls,” etc.
The loom on which this Narragansett weaver works might be six centuries
old. You may see precisely similar ones pictured by Hogarth in the
middle of the eighteenth century; and an older one still in the
Campanile at Florence, by Giotto, in 1334.
These excerpts from a letter of Weaver Rose’s give some pleasant
weaver’s lore, and are in the lucid, simple, and quaint English to be
expected of a man who still weaves and talks of hap-harlots:
“My grandfather and grandmother Robert and Mary Northrup lived at
what is now called Stuart Vale but then known as the Fish Pond, in a
little hamlet of four houses, only one of which, my grandfather’s, is
now standing. He owned a shore and fished in the spring and wove some
at home and went out amongst the larger farmers working at his trade
of weaving, whilst his wife carried on the weaving at home and had
a number of apprentices. He learned his trade of weaving of Martin
Read, the deacon of St. Paul’s Church, who lived a few rods from the
church. He died in 1822, his wife lived till 1848. The spool I gave
you was made by Langworthy Pierce, a veteran of the Revolution. It
has the initials of his name. I send you now one of his shuttles
used for weaving broadcloth, and a square of linen I have woven for
you of a pattern of five harnesses called Browbey. The looms here in
Narragansett were all made by local carpenters. Stephen Northrup made
looms, and Freeborn Church made looms and spinning wheels. I have 2
of his make. Friend Earle! more money can be made by weaving than
farming. I have wove 30 yards of rag carpet in one day at 10 cents a
yard; or 23 cents a yard when I found the warp. There was a man here
by the name of Eber Sherman, he called himself Slippery Eber. He died
in the war of 1812; his widow worked at spinning for 25 cents per
day and supported herself and one son well on that wage. One dollar
and a half per week was regular wage for a woman’s work. It took a
woman one week to weave a coverlet of 3 yards long and 2-1/2 yards
wide. Mahala Douglas went out to work at one dollar and a half per
week making butter and cheese, milking seven cows every week day and
nine on Sunday. She died leaving a large Estate, several thousand
dollars, which her Legatees had no trouble in spending in six weeks.
My grandfather was one of eight children. One brother was Rev. William
Northrup; Thurston Northrup, another brother, was a school-teacher
and a weaver of coverlets and cloth. John Northrup was called Weaver
John. He was a coverlet weaver. John Congdon was a maker of Weavers’
reeds or slays. I have 70 or 80 of his make in my house. I have a reed
that my grandfather Northrup had made when he went to the Island of
Rhode Island weaving Broadcloth. He received 50 cents per day pay.
Good Cream Cheese was 3 cents a pound at the same time of the Embargo
in the war of 1812. I have an Eight and Twenty slay with 29 Beer that
cost one dollar, made by John Congdon 70 years ago, as good as when
made. He lived in North Kingston.”
The word slay or sley, meaning a weavers’ reed, has not been used
commonly in England for many years, and is contemporary with
hap-harlot. A beer was a counting-off of forty warp-threads.
It may be seen by this letter how many classes of workmen were kept
busily employed by these homespun industries; makers of looms, wheels,
reeds, scarnes, raddles, temples, swifts, niddy-noddys, spools, and
shuttles; and turners of warp-beams and cloth-beams. The proper shaping
of a shuttle was as important as the shaping of a boat’s hull. When the
shuttle was carefully whittled out, smoothed off with glass, lightly
shod with steel, and marked by burnt-in letters with the maker’s
initials, it was a proper piece of work, one for a craftsman to be
distinctly proud of. Spools could be turned on a lathe but were marked
by hand. No wonder our weaver loved his old worn-out rubbish; every
piece had been made and used by his kinsfolk and neighbors, who had put
into every spool, shuttle, and loom good, faithful hand-work; and, like
the cloths he wove, they wore well.
Weaver Rose would be an unimpeachable candidate for many of our
modern patriotic-hereditary societies. One great-great-grandfather
held a commission under King George III., which the weaver still has.
Others were members of the provincial assemblies. Two great-uncles
were taken on board a Yankee privateer in the Revolution, carried to
England to Dartmoor Prison, and never heard of afterward. The son
of one of those patriots was captured in the War of 1812, and kept
eight years at Dartmoor, while he was mourned in Narragansett as
dead. He was then released, returned home, and held to his death an
office under the government at Wickford, a Narragansett seaport. One
great-uncle was starved to death in the prison-ship _Jersey_ in the
Revolution, and another lost his life in Newport during imprisonment
by the British. Grandfather James Rose was with the famous Kingston
Reds in the Battle of Rhode Island and other Revolutionary encounters;
and the weaver’s father, William Rose, fought in the War of 1812.
His great-great-grandfather Eldred killed the famous Indian warrior
Hunewell, after that cruel Narragansett tragedy, the Swamp Fight.
Hunewell was naked and covered with grease, but he was not slippery
enough to escape the bitter Englishman, who had been fighting for days.
This tragedy was at Silver Spring, about two miles from the weaver’s
home. Another Indian chased Eldred, but without capturing him. The
chase was long, and Eldred did not spend much time in looking backward,
but he never forgot the Indian’s face; and some years later he met
in Newport an Indian who was very smooth and friendly, but whom he
at once recognized as his old-time enemy. The weaver thus grimly and
laconically tells the sequel: “Grandfather got an awl and settled it
in his forehead and finished him.” Great-grandmother Austin was one of
sixteen children. Their names were Parvis, Picus, Piersus, Prisemus,
Polybius, Lois, Lettice, Avis, Anstice, Eunice, Mary, John, Elizabeth,
Ruth, Freelove. All lived to be three-score and ten, and one to be
five-score and two years old.
I have dwelt somewhat at length on the sturdy fighting ancestry of
this weaver, with a distinct sense of pleasure at the quality of
his forebears. He is, in the best sense, a pure American, with not
a drop of admixture of the blood from recent immigrations. Some of
his ancestors were those who made the original Petaquamscut purchase
from the Indians, and here he lives on the very land they purchased.
It is such examples as this that give dignity to New England rural
life, give us a sense of not being offensively new. In my genealogical
researches in England I have not found such cases nearly as common as
in New England. Surprise and even annoyance is shown in England at
your expectation and hope to find descendants of the original owners
occupying farm-houses and manors two hundred years old.
Had the weaving been the only portion of the work done in the
farm-house it would seem an important addition to the round of domestic
duties, but every step in the production of clothing was done at home,
as expressed by Miss Hazard of her great-grandfather’s household in
Narragansett: “From the shepherd who dagged the sheep, the wool-comber
who combed the wool, the spinners who spun, the weavers who wove, all
in regular order till the travelling tailor made the clothes up, and
Thomas Hazard went to meeting in a suit made from wool of his own
growing.” The “all-wool goods, yard wide,” which we so glibly purchase
to-day meant to the Narragansett dame the work of months from the time
the fleeces were given to her deft fingers. After dag-locks, bands,
feltings, tarred locks, were skilfully cut out, the white locks were
carefully tossed and separated, and tied in net bags with tallies, to
be dyed. The homely saying, “dyed in the wool,” indicated a process
of much skill. Indigo furnished the blue shades, madder and logwood
the red. Sassafras, fustic, hickory, and oak bark furnished yellow
and brown. It will be noted that the old-time dyes were all vegetable.
After the dyeing mixed colors could be made by spreading in layers and
carding them over and over again. In carding wool, the cards should
be kept warm and the wool very slightly greased with rape-oil or
“swines’-grease.” At last the wool was carded into light rolls and was
ready for the wheel.
An old writer says, “The action of spinning must be learned by
practice, not by relation.” The grace and beauty of wool-spinning, ever
sung by the poets, need not be described. Stepping lightly backward and
forward, with arms at times high in the air, now low at the side, often
by the light only of the fire, the worker, no matter what her age,
seemed the perfection of the grace of motion; and the beauty of the
occupation makes the name of spinster (the only title by law of every
single woman) a title of honor and dignity.
The preparation of flax was infinitely more tedious and more
complicated. From the time the tender plant springs up, through
pulling, spreading, drying, rippling, stacking, rotting, cleaning,
braking, swingling, beetling, ruffling, hetchelling, spreading, and
drawing, there are in all over twenty dexterous manipulations till the
flax is ready for the wheel, the most skilful manipulation of all,
and is wrapped round the spindle. Flax thread was spun on the small
flax-wheel. “Lint on the wee wheel, woo’ on the muckle.” It was reeled
into skeins on a clock-reel, which ticked when the requisite number had
been wound, when the spinner stopped and tied the skein. A quaint old
ballad has the refrain:
“And he kissed Mistress Polly when the clock-reel ticked.”
These knots of linen thread had to be bleached before they were woven.
They were soaked in water for days, and constantly wrung out; they were
washed again and again in the brook; they were “bucked” with ashes
and hot water in a bucking-tub; they were seethed, soaked, rinsed,
dried, and wound on bobbins and quills for the loom. In spite of all
this bleaching, the linen web, when woven, would not be white, and it
afterward went through twoscore more processes of bucking, possing,
rinsing, drying, and grassing. In all, forty bleaching manipulations
were necessary for “light linens.” Thus, at least, sixteen months had
passed since the flax-seed had been sown, during which the good-wife
had not “eaten the bread of idleness.”
With the passing of these old-time household arts of spinning and
weaving, went also the household independence. Well timed was our
struggle for freedom from British rule, when every man and wife on
their own farm held everything necessary for life and comfort--food,
shelter, fuel, illumination, clothing. What need had he or she to fear
any king? It could not be such an independent revolt to-day; in the
matter of clothing alone, no family could be independent of outside
assistance.