Illustrated in the History of Albany. 



97 



in spinning flax or wool. The weaving was sometimes done in the 

 house by itinerating weavers, but more frequently the yarn was given 

 out to be woven by persons who made this their occupation. Not only 

 plain linen was made in this way, but even the more ornamental, which 

 was required for table and toilet use. The pride of every mother of a 

 family was not only to have her own house well supplied, but to have 

 ready against the time of marriage an outfit for each of her daughters. 

 Stockings, of course, were knit in the house for the family, and it 

 accounts for the good temper and amiability of our grand-mothers that 

 they found, in the swift flying needles, points of discharge for the irri- 

 tability which otherwise might have gone to make their husbands 

 uncomfortable. 



Woolen cloth, also, was largely home-made. The first prizes which 

 were given by the old Society of Arts,'^ from which this Institute took 

 its origin, were for the manufacture of woolen cloths, and there are pre- 

 served in the library of the Institute several volumes of specimens of 

 these prizes. The spinning and weaving were mostly done at home, 

 but there were small fulling mills where the web was dyed, fulled and 

 dressed. The cloth produced in this way was not as fine as French 

 broadcloth, but was warm and durable, and had no shoddy mixed with 

 it. We have it mentioned as a notable fact that in 1790 President 

 Washington appeared in a suit from cloth made at a mill in Providence, 

 Khode Island. Serge and linsey-woolsey were of course the principal 

 materials for the ordinary female dress. But the prosperity which 

 Albany had enjoyed before the revolution, and still more afterward, 

 had doubtless brought hither habits of luxury and elegance which 

 could only be satisfied by the rich materials from abroad. 



To you who are familiar with the rich female costume of the revo- 

 lutionary period, it is not necessary that I should describe it in detail. 

 Let it sufiice to say that in richness of material, in the elegance and 

 taste of arrangement, it has never been surpassed. I venture, how- 

 ever, to insert here a memorandum taken from the papers* of General 

 Washington, containing a list of articles to be purchased by his agent 

 in London, and sent out for Mrs. Washington and her daughter. It 

 will show to those growling husbands, who are disposed in these days 

 to find fault with the luxury and expensiveness of their wives' toilets, 

 that they have very good examples for making a liberal provision for 

 those whose appropriate and becoming decoration reflects honor on 

 themselves. 



* Ouoted by Mr. Lossing in his " Centenary of Progress." 

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