106 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



the selectmen were ordered to assess on each family the 

 spinning and weaving of a certain amount of cloth. This 

 cloth was woven on hand looms, as was all the cloth of 

 every kind made in England as well as here ; for it must be 

 remembered that the power loom was not in existence, — it 

 was invented by Rev. Edward Cartwright in 1788, and per- 

 fected by him in 1790. 



The first fulling mill for dressing this home-made cloth 

 was built at Rowley in 1643 by a company of weavers, 

 skilled workmen from Yorkshire, under the spiritual and 

 business charge of Rev. Ezekiel Rogers, where the first 

 woolen eloth was dressed in New England. Another fulling 

 mill was erected in Salem about the same time, and soon 

 after they became common. The price of this home-made 

 cloth was six or eight shillings per yard, imported cloth fifteen 

 to eighteen shillings. 



In 1657 the value of a sheep was one pound, an ox five 

 pounds, horse ten pounds, cow three pounds, wool eight 

 pence, negro boy twenty pounds. A story which I came 

 across in preparing this paper, though not entirely pertinent, 

 will not be displeasing to you, as illustrating some of the 

 trials of this early colonial life. In the latter half of the 

 last century lived a small family on a stony farm in Con- 

 necticut. The stock consisted of a dozen sheep and a cow, 

 who, besides her yield of milk, added her services on the 

 plough ; corn bread, milk and bean porridge were the staples 

 of their diet. The father being incapacitated by long illness, 

 the mother did her work in the house and helped the boys 

 in the fields. Once in mid- winter one of the boys needed a 

 new suit, and there was neither money nor wool in the 

 house. The mother sheared the half-grown fleece from a 

 sheep, and in a week it was made into clothes for the boy. 

 The shorn sheep, so generous in such need, was protected 

 from the cold by a wrapping made of braided straw. They 

 lived four miles from the meeting-house, to which the mother 

 and her boys walked every Sunday. Those boys became the 

 Rev. Samuel Nott, a famous preacher, and Rev. Dr. Eliphalet 

 Nott, the President of Union College. 



Our ancestors emigrated from different places in the 

 United Kingdom, and some from the various countries of 



