MATERIAL FOCUS:  FLAX

To understand the properties of flax, and how the plant may have been cultivated and processed to produce linen and other household goods, objects, and wearables items on the plantation. 

Flax is a bast fiber, like hemp, jute, and nettle, meaning single stalk, a soft fiber. As cited in the book Empire of Cotton,  “[f]lax is one of the earliest natural fibers grown, harvested, spun, and woven for textile wear as early as thirty thousand years ago based on archeological evidence in the Middle East and North Africa. One of the earliest-grown crops on American plantations.” 

Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Penguin House, 2014, pages 5, 22

An example of the use of flax can be seen in an interview with Betty Cofer, a former slave who was born in 1856 on a plantation in Wachovia, North Carolina (current day Forsyth County, Salem, North Carolina). Cofer states:

“We raised our own flax an’ cotton an’ wool, spun the thread, wove the cloth, made all the clothes. Yes’m, we made the mens’ shirts and pants an’ coats. We wove the wool blankets too… All our spinnin' wheels and flax wheels and looms was hand— made by a wheel wright, Marse Noah Westmoreland. He lived over yonder. (A thumb indicates north.) Those old wheels are still in the family'. I got one of the flax wheels.”

P. J. Cross, “Aunt Betty Cofer” in Federal Writers Project: Slave Narrative Project: Vol. 11, North Carolina, Part 1, (Washington, 1936), 168 - 169, https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn111/.

A close account of harvesting, cultivating, and processing flax to linen is evident in an interview with Parker Pool, a formerly enslaved person, born between 1845 and 1847 in Wake County, NC (91 years old at the time of the interview). Pool states:

“I knows how to raise flax. You grow it an' when it is grown you pull it clean up out of de groun' till it kinder rots. Dey have what dey called a brake, den it wuz broke up in dat. De bark wuz de flax. Dey had a stick called a swingle stick, made kinder like a sword. Dey used dis to knock de sticks out de flag. Dey would den put de flax on a hackle, a board wid a lot of pegs in it. Den dey clean ant string it out till it looks lak your hair. Dey flax when it came from de hackles wuz ready for de wheel whur it spun into thread. I tell you, you couldn't break it either. "When it wuz spun into thread dey put it on a reel. It turned 100 times and struck, when it struck it wuz called a cut. When it comes from de wheel it wuz called a broach. De cuts stood fer so much flax. So many cuts made a yard, but dere wuz more ter do, size it, and hank it before it wuz weaved. Most of the white people had flax clothes.”

T. Patt Matthews, “Parker Pool”  in Federal Writers Project: Slave Narrative Project: Vol. 11, North Carolina, Part 2 (Washington, 1936 - 1938), 186 -187. 

Although Pool does not elucidate who “they” are in his description of flax production, it could be assumed that Pool is referring to women as Plantation labor segregated by gender was common practice across America. Women worked alongside men picking cotton, plowing, and cutting wood; however, women were also obliged to be deeply engrossed in textile production such as hand dying, weaving, and processing natural fibers.  Men often worked with iron as blacksmiths and with wood as woodworkers as suggested in Betty Cofer’s account. My perception of the labor that was being done to process flax into fiber (harvesting, cultivating, getting, and scutching) was done by both enslaved women and men. The spinning and weaving of the fiber for linen production was done by women.

Pools' narrative has much to offer when understanding the process and techniques used by women to process flax and the production of fiber.

Growing and harvesting flax is fairly simple because the plant can be grown in a variety of temperatures. Processing the plant as a natural fiber for textile production is an arduous task. 

Wade Glenn from Winston Salem, North Carolina, birthday October 30, year unknown recounts:

“In those days thee all kinds of work by hand on the farm. No Madam, no cotton to speak of, or tobacco then. Just farmin' corn, hogs, wheat fruit, like here. Yes Madam, that was all' on JohnBeck' farm except the flax and the big wooley sheep. Plenty of nice clean flax-cloth suits we all had," … Mammy sang a lot when she was spinning and weaving. She sing an'that big wheel a turnin!” 

Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 12, Ohio, Anderson-Williams. 1936.Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn120/.

Flax, Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC, Summer 2023

Photo by Mellanee Goodman