factor to be taken into consideration when ordering 

 a floorcloth. In his letter to Marcy on February 1, 

 David wrote: "The Carpet cannot be painted in the 

 Winter Season, but in the Spring I hope to have it 

 done."'" Hopefully the young couple did not have 

 to wait too long after their April wedding for the 

 floorcloth with which their first parlor was furnished. 

 Besides creating their own designs, some home- 

 makers went a step further and applied them to 

 floorcloths they had manufactured themselves. This 

 was what Lyman Beecher's bride had done. Re- 

 calling for his children something of family life in 

 East Hampton, Long Island, around 1800, Lyman 

 Beecher related the following incident: 



We had no carpets; there was not a carpet from end 

 to end of the town. All had sanded floors, some of 

 them worn through. Your mother introduced the first 

 carpet. Uncle Lot gave me some money, and I had an 

 itch to spend it. Went to a vendue, and bought a bale 

 of cotton. She spun it, and had it woven; then she 

 laid it down, sized it, and painted it in oils, with a 

 border all around it, and bunches of roses and other 

 flowers over tlie centre. She sent to New York for her 

 colors, and ground and mixed them herself. The carpet 

 was nailed down on the garret floor, and she used to 

 go up there and paint. 



The fact that floorcloths do appear in portraits 

 suggests that they were by no means regarded as 

 an inferior or humble type of underfoot furnishing. 

 On the contrary, a pride of ownership is implied. 

 The owners of the floorcloths were often prominent 

 persons; floorcloths were used by a colonial governor, 

 William Burnet, by one of the wealthiest of Vir- 

 ginia gentlemen, Robert "King" Carter, and by a 

 President of the LTnited States, Thomas Jefferson. 

 The Ellsworths, outstanding residents of Connecticut 

 whose portrait by Earl was referred to in a preceding 

 paragraph, might be included in this list too. Mr. 

 Ellsworth was a lawyer, delegate to the Continental 

 Congress, participant in the Constitutional Convention, 

 and, at the time the portrait (fig. 1) was painted, 

 a United States Senator. He later became Chief 

 Justice of the Supreiue Court. John Phillips is 



another person of importance who used floorcloths. 

 After acquiring great wealth and holding several 

 public offices, he turned to philanthropy, giving 

 substantial gifts to Dartmouth College, being instru- 

 mental in the founding of Phillips Academy, Andover, 

 and establishing Phillips Exeter Academy. When his 

 portrait (fig. 11) was painted for Dartmouth College 

 in 1793, Phillips was shown in a domestic setting 

 complete with canvas carpets. That such persons 

 owned and were sometimes portrayed with floorcloths 

 is evidence that, as symbols of affluence and status, 

 floorcloths were as acceptable as other types of under- 

 foot furnishings. 



Inventories appear to verify this, for among those 

 studied from Suffolk County, Massachusetts, few in 

 proportion to the total number recorded in any one 

 year list floorcloths. Thus, floor coverings including 

 floorcloths were owned by only a small segment of 

 the total population and were a status symbol 

 because of their limited ownership. If only in- 

 ventories with entries for underfoot furnishings 

 are considered, however, floorcloths appear more 

 often than other types of floor coverings. In other 

 words, although floorcloths were a fairly common 

 type of underfoot furnishing, they were a rather 

 uncommon item of household furnishing in 18th- 

 century America. For example, out of some 75 

 inventories recorded in 1758, 3 were found in which 

 underfoot furnishings were mentioned. Of these 

 three, one, the Jackson inventory of 1758, listed "2 

 Turk & 2 homspn. Carpets," while the other two 

 listed floorcloths. The inventory of Mr. Thomas 

 Pain included an entry for "1 floor Cloth."'' Mrs. 

 Hannah Pemberton's inventory revealed that this 

 Boston widow had "a painted floor Cloth 9/" in the 

 parlor as well as "a floor Cloth 40/" in the great 

 room.'' A similar pattern of ownership emerges 

 from inventories registered two decades later. Among 

 the more than 100 inventories recorded in 1778, only 

 4 listed floor coverings, and of these only 2 had 

 entries for floorcloths. One, that of Thomas Leverett 

 of Boston, listed "1 floor Cloth 12/" as well as "2 

 large floor Carpets £6."*" The other inventory was 

 Joshua Winslow's, already mentioned in connection 



^' Letter from David Spear, Jr., Boston, to Miss Marcy 

 Higgins, Eastham, Mass., Feb. 1, 1787. Ibid., p. 71. 



^' The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, edit. Barbara M. Cross 

 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1961), vol. 1, p. 86; 

 for directions for making floorcloths, see Nina Fletcher 

 Little, American Decorative ]Vall Painting, 1700-1850 (Stur- 

 bridge, Mass.: Old Sturbridge Village, 1952), pp. 76-77. 



"Inventory of Thomas Pain, May 19, 1758. In Suffolk 

 Probate Books, vol. 53, pp. 359-61. 



3' Inventory of Mrs. Hannah Pemberton, June 22, 1758. 

 Ibid., vol. 53, pp. 445-47. 



'"Inventory of Thomas Leverett, May 22, 1778. Ibid., 

 vol. 77, pp. 410-21. 



22 



BULLETIN 250 : CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



