Sewing, ironing, cleaning and other women's work
About 1910
Letter from Mary Ann (Arnold) Stevens to Olivia (Arnold) Hitchcock
Westminster West [Vermont]
August 31, 1846
"I suppose if you were here, you would inquire what I find to busy myself about? It is true I have an easy time comparatively speaking. I am released from those domestic cares which I used to take when at fathers. Yet you know that a minister’s wife is not entirely free from care. More is expected of her than of a doctor’s wife, or farmer’s wife. A great responsibility rests upon her and if she feels interested as she ought, she fill find enough to do.
Sewing Society about 1875
"The sewing society meets once in two weeks. They are now preparing to send a box away, not dreaded, when they meet here this week. They have quilted four bedquilts since I have been here. Miss Sawyer & her scholars pieced & quilted one."
Sewing Group
About 1900
"How does your society flourish? I suppose you have not been able to meet with them. They are expecting a fair in the other parish in a few weeks.
I have made my traveling bag into cricket coverings. Mr. Briggs of Hun made them — charged $2.25. They are handsome but rather dear."
Mary Turley Robinson
Nantucket Ottomans, Crickets and Quilt 1938
At first I assumed cricket coverings are to protect the garden plants. Or was some game of Cricket going on in Vermont?
Then I stumbled upon a print of ottomans and crickets and now I see a cricket is a subcategory of what we around here call footstools.
Then I stumbled upon a print of ottomans and crickets and now I see a cricket is a subcategory of what we around here call footstools.
$2.25 was indeed a lot of money for upholstery services!
Historians love the minutiae of everyday life---the small details whether it's crickets or patchwork.
I found these two letters on Spared & Shared, a blog "Rescuing History from Old Letters One Page at a Time. "
Do a search. You might find someone you know.
Another letter from New England about upholstery:
January 26, 1848: Anne Eliza Shepard to Maria Leavitt (Burns) Mack
"have commenced some black patchwork of silk & velvet for chair seats. Mrs. Crosby of Lowell told me that those old fashioned chairs of which grandmother had a half dozen would be very suitable to cover & she would think that each of the sisters would like two of them.... Mrs. Crosby has an old chair fitted up & covered with some patchwork that Frances made...."
https://sparedandshared2.wordpress.com/letters/1848-anne-eliza-shepard-to-maria-leavitt-burns-mack/