Friday, March 18, 2011

Facts for the Ladies...

 



Ad from Appleton's, 1873

Mrs. Millard was surely the talk of New Hamburg with her new Wheeler & Wilson sewing machine, a popular lightweight model made in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  This would have been a sizeable investment for the Millards.  At this time, sewing machines were well beyond the means of most American families.  Some communities pooled their money to buy one together or would buy one on an installment plan.

Wheeler & Wilson sewing machine trade card

Billed as "the only sewing machine that does not fail in any point," their ads claimed that, "it turns drudgery into a pastime."  What would it have been like to sew by hand for six and a steamboat?  Endless labor, for sure.  A woman of the time wrote in her journal:
I think life would be so much more pleasant were it not for the trouble and bother of making clothes. Oh deliver me from the monotonous stitch, stitch from morning til night and rest for aching eyes, sore fingers, and the like.
I wish I was one of those sassy sorts that never gets in a fret over anything. Didn't this sewing machine help me along fast. I never mean to sew by hand any more if I can help it.                - Georgia Long Shields of Georgia, 1853
In the 1860s, it took about three hours to sew a pair of summer pants by hand but on a sewing machine, they could be stitched in less than thirty-eight minutes.  Using a sewing machine surely gave Mrs. Millard some relief from the countless hours and tedium of hand sewing.