Making of Clothes & Shoes

The Making of Clothes from Flax and Wolfe – Pioneer Shoes – Killing Wild Turkeys.
By: Thomas A. Walton

Ironton Register, March 10, 1904

Flax was raised for lint and clothing. When the seed was ripe the flax was pulled up by the roots and spread on the ground to rot. The rottings were done by the rain and the dew. It did not impair the strength of the lint, it only made the straw brittle and loosened it from the lint so that it might be separated from the lint. It was then broken by hand; then scattered to separate the lint from the stalk. This was done by driving a board into the ground and sharpening the other end.

Photo courtesy Wikipedia – A hackle or heckle, a tool for threshing flax and preparing the fiber

On this, a hand full of flax was held while the operator, with a piece of wood similar in shape to a two-edged sword, struck the flax on the opposite side of his hand until he had cleaned all the pieces of stalk out.

The coarse part of the flax, called tow, was then combed out by repeatedly drawing it one end at a time, through a shackle. The tow was made into coarse fabric for men’s shirts and trousers for common wear. The warp of this tow cloth was usually spun from the fine flax, the filling only being spun from the tow. The fine flax was generally made into sheets and women’s wearing apparel and a portion of it into sewing thread for general use.

In the first settlement of the county, men’s and boy’s pants were made of deer or other skins dressed. When these got wet they were beaten over a tree or log to limber them.

The spinning [illegible] which few of the present generation of our girls have enjoyed. The wheel used for spinning flax was called the “little wheel” to distinguish it from the “big wheel” used for spinning wool. These “stringed instruments” furnished the principal music of the home. They were indispensable household articles in those days.

After the settlers succeeded in raising sheep they commenced making woolen cloth. The shearing of sheep was attended to with trouble and delay, as that indispensable article, sheep shears were owned by but a few settlers. One sometimes served a neighborhood for miles around.

There being at first no carding machines, wool was carded and made into short rolls with hand cards. These rolls were spun on a “big wheel” which may still be seen in the houses of some of the old settlers, being occasionally used for spinning and twisting stocking yarn. It was turned with the hand and with such velocity to give it sufficient momentum to enable the nimble mother or daughter by her backward step to draw out and twist her thread of nearly the length of the cabin.

The woolen cloth was woven on the loom and used for wearing with linen. A common article made was linsey, of which the warp or chain, was linen and the filling woolen; but after this, they began raising cotton that was used for warp instead of linen.

The cotton was picked and packed away and during the winter evenings the seeds were picked or pulled out and the cotton carded into bats or sometimes rolls and then spun. This yarn or thread was used for various purposes but principally for warp for linsey and to weave into cloth for dresses.

When there was more spinning to be done than the wife could do in addition to her housework, and where the daughters were too young to help, spinsters were employed to come into families to spin flax and tow in the winter and wool in the summer.

These spinsters received a ninepence (12 1/2c) sometimes called a bit a day, the day’s work ending at an early bedtime. Afterward, 12 cuts of yarn were called a day’s work. These earnings would not clothe a girl of the present generation. The young women were dressed in cloth of their own manufacture, except the calicoes for the summer Sunday dresses; six yards being a full pattern for a woman of ordinary size.

The linen was not all woven in its natural color, that which was intended for certain uses was bleached. It was spread on the grass and sprinkled very wet when there was no rain or due to wetting it and by this alternate wetting and drying it was soon bleached to a perfect white. Much dying was done in the family, dye woods and ye stuff wormed a portion of the country merchant’s stock.

Barrels of chipped Maagara, logwood, and other woods and kegs of madder, alum, copper, indigo, etc., constituted a large number of the merchant’s sales. Many doubtless remember the old dye tub standing in the chimney corner covered with a board and used for a seat for children when the chairs were wanted for visitors.

For some years moccasins were used instead of shoes during the winter and in the summer nearly all went barefooted. Boys and girls generally went barefooted most of the year and went to church barefooted. Moccasins were made of the dressed skin of a buck or groundhog sewed together with leather.

After some years tanneries of limited capacity were established. Some tanned their hides in a large trough made for the purpose. Shoes for both feet were made on the same lath. Rights and lefts were unknown. Boots were seldom worn.

There was in almost every neighborhood a traveling shoemaker who made his annual circuit with his “kit.” The children had a happy time during their stay. Each waited with anxious expectations for his new shoes. They were sometimes paid by the pair, sometimes by the piece.

The wild animals inhabiting this region at the time of its settlement, there were bears, buffalo, deer, panther, elk, wild cats, wolves, gray fox, beaver, raccoon, opossum, squirrel, rabbit, weasel, mink, muskrats, skunk, and groundhog. The deer, wild turkey, and wolves were abundant everywhere. The deer were so numerous that often a man could sit in his door and shoot from one to three in a day.

The turkeys were often caught in pens made on purpose, which pen made of poles and small logs. The bottom would be from eight to ten feet square and each round was drawn in a little so that when the pen was finished there would be but about three feet of space at the top, and this was covered with chunks of wood or small logs. A trench about eighteen inches in width was then dug from about the middle of the pen to some distance outside of the pen, about two feet wide, and corn was scattered the entire length of the trench.

When a flock of turkeys found the corn they would follow its entire length to get the corn. When inside they would never look down but would walk around the pen looking for a way out. The owners would then kill what they wanted of these and let the remainder out.

Two boys on Wolf Creek once found 28 turkeys in their pen. They killed and cleaned them and carried them to the river, a distance of six miles, and sold them for 12 1/2c. each, and they thought they were doing well. They took part of their pay in coffee at 50c per pound.

In the Autumn wild turkeys often became so fat that they could not fly until they had run a long distance. A dog could easily catch them before they could get into a tree if they did not have a steep place to start from. There is a small fork which is called Broad Hollow. This hollow and hillside on the west of it were covered with very large beech trees.

During the time that there were nuts on them, the turkeys would flock there and get exceedingly fat. Often when one was shot in the trees it would fall and burst open in the breast and back, the fat parting like it had been cut with a knife. They were so heavy they could seldom fly more than 20 or 25 feet into a tree. They have been killed weighing 28 lbs. when dressed. They were more numerous (after the wolves were driven away) than chickens now.

The wolves were so numerous that a dog could not travel alone if alone and if the wolves found him they soon chased him home or killed him. They often came to the house at night and chased the dog into or under the house and try to get the hogs and sheep out of the pen. For many years it was difficult to protect sheep from wolves. They had to be penned every night. Many were destroyed even in the daytime near the house.

It is the nature of the wolf to seize the sheep by the throat and suck its blood and leave the carcass as food for other animals, or come again when hungry and could get no blood and satisfy its appetite with flesh. They would seldom attack a person from the fact that no man would travel without a gun or ax or both and they feared the smell of powder or iron.

They often made night hideous with their howling. They made a noise something like a dog when calling others to help kill sheep, only many times louder so that when ten wolves were howling it would sound like a thousand.

Often several hundred would be howling on the surrounding hills and there would be a constant echoing from the hills. I have been told by old hunters that they have seen wolf teeth three inches in length and very sharp. Wolves caught, when young, become very docile but will kill chickens when they get a chance.

Some hunters had pens built with a lid. This lid was raised and set on triggers made of wood. The trigger was baited with meat, and when the wolf came and smelled the meat he jumped in and pulled the meat to get it off. The trigger would let the trap lid fall and catch the wolf in the trap. The wolf then could be easily secured.

Some hunters had large steel traps that they set in the woods for them. After they were set dirt was put over them and ashes over the dirt so the wolf could not smell the steel and when reaching for the meat suspended over the trap, the trap would catch the wolf’s foot. A chain was attached to the trap and to the chain hooks so arranged as to keep the wolf until the hunter could overtake and kill it. If the trap was stationary, the wolf would gnaw its leg off and escape.