The Age of Homespun by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

We see how an English production system based on a clear division of labor-men doing the weaving and women the spinning-broke down in the colonial setting, becoming first marginalized, then feminized, then politicized, and how the new system both prepared the way for and was sustained by machine-powered spinning.

We discover how ideas about cloth and clothing affected relations between English settlers and their Algonkian neighbors. Under the singular and brilliant lens that Ulrich brings to this study, ordinary household goods-Indian baskets, spinning wheels, a chimneypiece, a cupboard, a niddy-noddy, bed coverings, silk embroidery, a pocketbook, a linen tablecloth, a coverlet and a rose blanket, and an unfinished stocking-provide the key to a transformed understanding of cultural encounter, frontier war, Revolutionary politics, international commerce, and early industrialization in America. Using objects that Americans have saved through the centuries and stories they have passed along, as well as histories teased from documents, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich chronicles the production of cloth-and of history-in early America. Photo (c) Jim Harrison, Radcliffe Archives, Harvard University

She and her husband, Gael Ulrich, are the parents of five grown children. Her work is also featured on an award-winning Web site called. During her tenure as a MacArthur Fellow, she assisted in the production of a PBS documentary based on A Midwife’s Tale. Born and raised in the Rocky Mountain West, she has lived in New England since 1960. She won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991 for A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. Formerly a professor of American history at the University of New Hampshire, she is the author of Good Wives (1982) and numerous articles and essays on early American history. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University. A Bed Sheet in Beinecke by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA).Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.Although DoHistory is centered on the life of Martha Ballard, you can learn basic skills and techniques for interpreting fragments that survive from any period in history. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into Laura Thatcher Ulrich's book A Midwife's Tale and the film which followed, which were both based upon the remarkable 200 year old diary of midwife/healer Martha Ballard. **DoHistory invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past.Borzoi Reader | Authors | Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

The Age of Homespun by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich