124 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



for the future investment of the delicate limbs of my fair country women, towering 

 like an Egyptian pyramid. * * * This laudable economy was not peculiar to 

 Bergen. It is not long since that the manufacturing of our own cloth was very gen- 

 eral among our farmers. Why is it discontinued? * * * Those who have sheep 

 can certainly make homespun to advantage. * * * But, alas, the rage for foreign 

 finery. * * * Let us make homespun.* 



And he advised the women to make their petticoats of homespun, 

 and counseled the farmers to depart from the practice of selling their 

 best lambs to the butcher, and at the same time urged the utility of 

 exchanging rams with some distant farmer every year. 



While Livingston's picture was true as regards Bergen and the coun- 

 try immediately adjacent, it was not strictly so as to the interior coun- 

 ties off the great lines of travel ; there the small flock of sheep and the 

 household industry supplied a greater part of the clothing. 



Outside of Philadelphia and Lancaster the homespun manufacture 

 was still carried on by the farmers, who usually kept from 40 to 50 

 sheep, yielding about 2J pounds of wool each, to supply the family with 

 wool for clothing and a little surplus which was made into hosiery or 

 yarns and sent to the town markets. The sheep generally yielded ex- 

 cellent wool, and the farmers improved them by getting good rams 

 wherever they could be found. 



In Delaware and Maryland there was a considerable homespun man- 

 ufacture from good wool, fine and short, but the fleece seldom weighed 

 more than 3 pounds. 



The tide-water region of Virginia was generally supplied with clothing 

 made from English goods, which were paid for by tobacco and other 

 agricultural products, but in the interior and mountain counties, and 

 particularly in the Shenandoah Valley, there was a large household 

 manufacture, the surplus over the family wants supplying the wants of 

 those engaged in other occupations. In the vicinity of Staunton there 

 was a considerable manufacture of wool hats. Wool was worth about 

 25 cents a pound, according to the demand, and according to general 

 account sheep were tolerably plenty, but of an inferior and ugly breed. 

 Taken as a whole, the wool of Virginia was considered superior to any 

 other in the Union at that time. 



In ^orth Carolina there was some homespun manufacture in theinte- 

 terior of the State, and in the mountain counties, where the wool was 

 very fine and had a good staple, but on the seaboard cloth and clothing 

 were obtained from the proceeds of tar and pitch shipped abroad. The 

 people of Charleston and the coast towns of South Carolina imported 

 their woolens from England, but in the upper country necessity com- 

 pelled the inhabitants to provide for their respective wants from their 

 own resources, in consequence of the difficulty and expense of convey- 

 ing bulky articles from the seacoast to the interior. The traveler there 

 soon became accustomed to the humming music of the spinning-Avheel 



* Ex-Governor William Livingston (1801). 



