been as a summer floor covering. Mrs. Abigail Adams, 

 returning home from Philadelphia where she had 

 been residing during her husband's term as Vice 

 President of the United States, wrote on May 6, 1791, 

 to her sister concerning household matters in Quincy, 

 Massachusetts: "I think my dear Sister that as it is 

 coming Hot weather my oil cloth will do best for my 

 parlour. I would wish to have it put down. What 

 would be the expence of a New Tack. If ten or 1 2 

 dollors would put one up, tis so great a comfort that I 

 should be glad to have one put up." '' It is not known 

 whether the oilcloth was laid on the bare floor or over 

 a carpet. Both oilcloth and straw matting, however, 

 were sometimes used in the 1 9th century as floor cover- 

 ing in the summer. The fact that Mrs. Adams wished 

 the oilcloth to be tacked in place, although not an- 

 swering the question of whether on the bare floor 

 or over a carpet, does indicate one way of laying 

 floorcloths. 



In entries or halls, as in front rooms, great chambers, 

 and parlors, the floor might be either partially or 

 completely covered with a floorcloth. In the en- 

 trance hall of the White House the "whole floor" was 

 covered with a "canvas painted Green." The adver- 

 tisement in the New-York Gazette and General Advertiser 

 of 1 799, previously mentioned, listed floorcloths for 

 entries in widths of 18, 24, and 36 inches. Such a 

 range of sizes from small to large would have provided 

 for either area or wall-to-wall protection depending 

 upon the size of the entry. 



Utilitarian as well as ornamental, floorcloths were 

 highly regarded as underfoot furnishings throughout 

 the 18th century, and their use in American houses 

 to cover, protect, and decorate floors, based on the 

 sources studied, was much more extensive than is 

 recognized today. 



STRAW 



Straw carpets and matting also were used on house- 

 hold floors in 18th-century America, but very little 

 is known about them. The use of straw and straw- 

 like materials for covering floors, however, was not 

 new. In the Middle Ages, loose straw, hay, and rushes 

 were strewed on floors. Later, mats of braided rush 



were made.^^ In England, mats appear in paintings 

 dating from the second half of the 16th century, and 

 their use extended well into the 17th century, as 

 shown in the portrait Sir Thomas Aston at Death Bed of 

 his First IVi/e, painted in 1635 by John Souch, for the 

 floor of the room depicted is covered with a braided 

 rush mat. Although the use of mats in England at this 

 time raises the possibility that they also may have 

 been used in the colonies, a check of 1 7th-century in- 

 ventories recorded in Essex County, Massachusetts, 

 does not reveal any mention of floormats or matting. '^^ 

 Their use on the floor, moreover, was not included in 

 the definition of mat as a "contexture of rushes" or 

 "rushes plated or woven together" in Bailey's Dic- 

 tionary until the late 1 730s when a mat was defined 

 as "rushes interwoven to lay on floors, and for various 

 other uses." 



The straw carpets and matting available in 18th- 

 century America, then, were not closely associated 

 with the earlier floor coverings of straw or rush. 

 Rather, their use in the colonies seems to date from 

 the mid-1 8th century. During his sojourn in this 

 country as Commissary to the Swedish congregation 

 on the Delaware River in the 1750s, Israel Acrelius 

 observed: "Straw carpets have lately been introduced 

 in the towns. But the inconvenience of this is that 

 they must soon be cleansed from flyspots, and a multi- 

 tude of vermin, which harbor in such things, and from 

 the kitchen smoke, which is universal." ^* 



Despite these disadvantages, straw carpets and 

 matting did meet with the approval of some of the 

 colonists. In May 1 759, no less a person than George 

 Washington, recently married to the widow Mrs. 

 Martha Custis, ordered "50 yards of best Floor 

 Matting" for use at Mount Vernon. ^^ That the use 

 of straw floor coverings was not limited to the Middle 

 Atlantic Colonies and the South is proved by both 



" Letter from Mrs. Abigail Adams, New York, to Mrs. 

 Mary Cranch, Braintree, Mass., May 6, 1791. In New Letters 

 of Abigail Adams, edit. Stewart Mitchell (Boston: Houghton 

 Mifflin Co., 1947), p. 73. 



*^ Albert Frank Kendrick, "English Carpets," Journal 

 of the Royal Society of Arts (Jan. 24, 1919), vol. 67, pp. 136-37. 



^ Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massa- 

 chusetts, op. cit. (footnote 2), vols. 1-8, covering the years from 

 1636 to 1683. 



'* IsR.^EL Acrelius, .1 History of New Sweden; or. The Settle- 

 ments on the River Delaware, trans, and edit. William M. Reynolds 

 (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1874), 

 p. 157. 



*' Invoice of goods ordered by George Washington, Williams- 

 burg, from Robert Gary, London, May 1759. In The Writings 

 of George Washington from the Original Manuuript Source, 1745— 

 1799, edit. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington: U.S. Govern- 

 ment Printing Office, 1931-1944), vol. 2, p. 320. 



26 



BULLETIN 250 : CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



