What we wear, the clothes on our backs, are always more than mere fashion statements. You can explore this fact by traveling back in time from English colonization to the American Revolution with freelance historical interpreter and educator Norah Van Riper on Monday, August 10, in the Legacy Gardens at the M.V. Museum’s Cooke House in Edgartown.
Van Riper, who will be dressed in period costume, will help visitors understand the creation of textiles at a granular level. She says, “The program will cover every step of processing wool, from when the sheep was wearing it until you are, then mending it and wearing it again. I will be doing the same for flax, showing how to turn the plant into linen. These are the two fibers that absolutely everybody wore — they were the ‘fiber of our lives,’ so to speak.”
Attendees will be able to experience all the equipment, including spinning wheels and a loom, hand cards and wool combs, a flax brake, a scutching stand and a scutching knife, and other items required to process wool and flax, as well as handle fiber samples at the various stages of processing.
Van Riper notes, “There will also be a lot of myth-busting, which is my signature way of dealing with history. One misconception is that everybody made their own clothing and textiles from scratch. Let’s pick apart the reality and figure out whether it was actually feasible to do it all yourself. Spoiler alert: The answer is no. When you place textile production in the larger context of people’s lives here on the Island and on the mainland, you must look at the whole household economy, and decide how much is practical to do yourself, based on who is in your home. Do you have lots of children, servants, and space for specialized equipment? Is it cost-effective to buy this specialized equipment?” Van Riper continues, “Looking at probate records, you realize how little textile equipment there was in many households, which tells us that not as many people were involved in home textile production as we might have thought.”
Then there was also the question of whether people had the time. “Beginning in 1642, with English colonization, almost everybody engaged in subsistence farming at least part of the time,” Van Riper explains. “We were never self-sufficient. And when you see all the steps laid out for linen or wool production, start multiplying how much time each step requires, and then think about all the other things you’ve got to do to support your household, it starts to click that this romantic notion that people made all their own clothes is just that — a romantic notion, not a practical one.”
An incident here during the Revolution also had a direct impact on textile production — one that affected the source at its starting point. Van Riper says, “Wool was the Island’s cash crop for about 200 years, ending pretty abruptly with Grey’s Raid.” In September 1778, British forces under Major Gen. Charles Grey executed a massive, highly destructive foraging expedition on the Vineyard to seize provisions for troops in New York and Rhode Island. A fleet of nearly 40 ships and 4,000 troops intimidated the largely undefended Island into surrendering approximately 10,000 to 10,500 sheep (as well as more than 300 oxen and cattle, and weapons).
However, Van Riper points out that Vineyarders were importing yarn, fabric, and finished clothes from when Thomas Mayhew Sr. and company arrived here in 1642. “We don’t think about the idea that you could purchase ready-made cloth from someplace else and cut out all those preliminary steps. Now you’ve got fabric that you can sew into household textiles or simple garments. Most people didn’t have the skills to make tailored garments. You bought finished clothing, even secondhand, that was being brought over.”
Asked if Vineyarders boycotted English goods as a political statement during the Revolution, Van Riper replies, “In 1774, the folks in Edgartown decided they were boycotting pretty much all British imports, including several forms of textiles, in response to the closure of the port of Boston, which was what Parliament did in retaliation for the Tea Party, as we call it today. The words of that statement were fairly harsh. They were calling anybody who disagreed with this nonimportation agreement a traitor to the cause, which makes me chuckle, because historians have relegated the Island to being ‘neutral’ for pretty much the entirety of the conflict.”
Van Riper says, “Ultimately, I hope that folks who come see ‘The Way We Wore’ really get that fashion has never been a simple story.”
“The Way We Wore: Clothing and Textiles During the Revolution,” with Norah Van Riper. August 10 at 4 pm at the Cooke House and Legacy Gardens, 51 Cooke St. in Edgartown. For tickets and information, visit mvmuseum.org/event/the-way-we-wore-2026.
