Dear All,

Do we have any experts on textile production in early 18th century
Tidewater, Virginia out there?  I am investigating a piece of information
that some of our docents mention during our tours and could use some outside
input.

We currently have both a flax wheel and a wool wheel on display at one of
our properties (a ca. 1725 house located in Virginia Beach, Virginia).  The
flax wheel has a distaff which is dressed with flax held on with a colored
ribbon.  Visitors to the house are told that the color of the ribbon
indicated whether the spinner was married or single.

This last bit of information came from Patricia Baines' 1977 book Spinning
Wheels, Spinners, and Spinning (pg. 101).  Baines does not cite her sources,
nor does she give very specific information on this particular point (the
colored ribbons are described as "traditional" without any comments on when
or where they were actually used, although the section in which the
information appears states that that method of tying on the flax was
prevalent in the British Isles and France).

I will admit to not having done a comprehensive survey of the literature on
textile production in the Chesapeake region, but I have certainly never come
across this information before and I have read fairly widely on the subject.
I tend to associate the idea of colored ribbons denoting marital status with
the Moravians and perhaps with other communities with strong European ties,
but I'm not aware of anything similar in Tidewater, VA.  Has anyone else
heard of the practice of using colored ribbons on distaffs in Colonial
America to denote marital status?  Has anyone done a great deal of reading
and *not* come across this information, or come across contradictory
information?

This of course begs the larger issue of how much textile production would
have been occuring in Virginia Beach in the early 18th century (there are no
spinning wheels listed on the probate inventory of the property taken in
1727, for example), but that is a question for another day.  For now, I'm
specifically interested in this question of colored ribbons.

Please feel free to contact me off list at [log in to unmask]

Many Thanks,
Catherine Dean

Catherine E. Dean
Curator of Collections
APVA--Preservation Virginia
204 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23220-5012
804-648-1889
[log in to unmask]

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