Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The first settlers who came to Virginia faced incredible hardships disease lack of food and impenetrable wilderness. But they forged ahead clearing land for farming and build- ing log homes. Many of them managed to survive and even- tually built larger plantations. My husband and I are fortu- nate to live in the main farmhouse of one of those old Vir- ginia plantations. Through hours of research of all the state records I could find I learned a great deal about the lives of the early Virginians who resided in our plantation home. A will from 1822 mentions various out-buildings includ- ing a dairy barn kitchen red house meat house and weaving house. Weaving house was what caught my attention. One original out-building still stands on our property and this log cabin does not have a fireplace of the size that would indi- cate its use as a kitchen. Nor have the ceilings any hooks or stains that would indicate its use as a meat house. So in my fantasies I like to think that our little log cabin is actually the weaving house. During those early years women could not easily obtain cloth for clothes or for their other necessities. Their husbands planted cotton and flax for crops and the women wove their own fabric. A neighborhood friend recently found a fragment of a child’s dress in one of the original walls of her eighteenth- century home. The small garment was made of homespun and beautifully stitched with linen thread. It had been patched several times. When it was no longer useful as a garment it had been stuffed between the walls to be used as insulation. Many old Virginia quilts have backings that are also made of homespun cloth I often wonder if some of the fabric woven in the Weaving House might have been used for quilt backs. (SP)