Havelocks and Housewives and Homespun, Oh My!

So we're back from Ralph's Rock Diner, which was awesome.  I should really be doing the reading for tomorrow, but I'm still so excited about all we learned today that I thought I'd write a bit about it before I forget any of the amazing details.  So I already wrote about the early photography session, but perhaps equally exciting was the session on Civil War era textiles, led by the curator of an upcoming exhibit Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts & Context in the Civil War.  Her presentation featured tons of images of quilts and some incredibly charming details about Civil War era textiles.  Here are some of my favorites:

Havelocks.  Do you know what a havelock is?  I didn't.  It's a headcovering used by the British military in India, named for its creator/proponent, Sir Henry Havelock.  If you have a hat that has a sort of kerchief that drapes down behind and covers your neck, that's basically a havelock.  Anyway, at the start of the Civil War, when various Ladies Societies were pitching in for the war effort, one of the things they supposedly made lots of were havelocks.  Many hundreds of havelocks.  But here's the thing: the soldiers hated them. There are accounts of the soldiers tearing them to bits. They were not helpful.  So the supposed "havelock fever" (of the women making them) was pretty much pointless. 

Housewives.  I know what you're thinking: you know what a housewife is.  But you don't know this kind.  During the Civil War, soldiers carried "housewives" -- by which they meant sewing kits -- so they could repair their uniforms or gear while on the road.  Here's a link to one from the Smithsonian.

Homespun: This word might not mean what you think it means.  I assumed it meant cloth made from threads spun at home.  Yes, that was sometimes true, and certainly prior to and even during the Civil War, lots of people were spinning and weaving at home.  But it turns out, lots of stuff called "homespun" was actually made in textile mills -- great big factories, not little tiny homes.  So "Homespun" was kind of like today's "Homemade" as a sort of aspirational marketing term.  Many Civil War-era manufacturer account books indicate "homespun" as one of their many product lines.  So much for there being no place like home.

Today (which is quickly becoming yesterday -- I mean Monday) I found out about the Civil-War- and textile-based- histories of a bunch of words I love, including:

Shoddy:  This was a kind of cloth re-made from other cloth -- so old cloth was re-processed back down to fibers that were then spun and woven again.  In and of itself, it's not a bad thing (recycling, after all!).  The term didn't have a particularly negative connotation until the Civil War, when uniforms made from shoddy proved to be....well....shoddy.  Here's a neat NYT article with a bit of info on military spending and the problems of shoddy military materials.

Sleazy: A fabric known as "Silesia" was in wide use as a lining for coats; it was thin and silky and, well, the sort of thing you'd have in the lining of a jacket.  It was commonly called "sleazy," and again, in and of itself it wasn't a bad thing for what it was used for, but obviously, if you started using lining material for something other than a lining, it would be a bad thing -- so material of inferior quality: sleazy!


Shebang (as in the whole shebang): The term first appeared in print in the Civil War, and referred to the tents soldiers set up in the fields.  We looked at lots of photos of such tents today.


And now, just one final, terribly gothic word explanation: Lint.  Look out, this one gets a bit gruesome.  You think you know lint.  You think it's in your dryer vent, or in your bellybutton. But during the Civil War, when the Ladies Societies weren't taken with "havelock fever" or knitting socks or making quilts, they were making lint.  Lint you ask?  Why lint?  And how?  Well, there are two hows: raveled or scraped.  "Raveled" lint meant that you unraveled cloth down to its threads.  "Scraped" lint meant you scraped the cloth with a sharp knife.  In either case, you were taking whatever old (hopefully clean) linens you had lying about, and making them into lint.  So that's the basic how.  But why?  Well, there were a lot of men wounded in the war.  Medicine being what it was (pretty barbaric) what they did was to pack the wounds with lint and then bandage them up.  So think about that the next time you clean your dryer filter.

That's all for tonight.  Sorry this post is so word-y.  I'll try to have more pictures tomorrow.