. Connecticut passed similar measures. Soon spinning-classes were
formed, and every family ordered to spin so many pounds of flax a year,
or to pay a fine. The industry received a fresh impulse through the
immigration of about one hundred Irish families from Londonderry. They
settled in New Hampshire on the Merrimac about 1719, and spun and wove
with far more skill than prevailed among those English settlers who had
already become Americans. They established a manufactory according to
Irish methods, and attempts at a similar establishment were made in
Boston.

There was much public excitement over spinning, and prizes were offered
for quantity and quality. Women, rich as well as poor, appeared on
Boston Common with their wheels, thus making spinning a popular holiday
recreation. A brick building was erected as a spinning-school costing
L15,000, and a tax was placed on carriages and coaches in 1757 to
support it. At the fourth anniversary in 1749 of the "Boston Society for
promoting Industry and Frugality," three hundred "young spinsters" spun
on their wheels on Boston Common. And a pretty sight it must have been:
the fair young girls in the quaint and pretty dress of the times, shown
to us in Hogarth's prints, spinning on the green grass under the great
trees. In 1754, on a like occasion, a minister preached to the
"spinsters," and a collection of L453 was taken up. This was in currency
of depreciated value. At the same time premiums were offered in
Pennsylvania for weaving linen and spinning thread. Benjamin Franklin
wrote in his _Poor Richard's Almanac_:--

"Many estates are spent in the getting,
Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting."

But the German colonists long before this had been famous flax-raisers.
A Pennsylvania poet in 1692 descanted on the flax-workers of
Germantown:--

"Where live High German people and Low Dutch
Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much,
There grows the flax as also you may know,
That from the same they do divide the tow."

Father Pastorius, their leader, forever commemorated his interest in his
colony and in the textile arts by his choice for a device for a seal.
Whittier thus describes it in his _Pennsylvania Pilgrim_:--

"Still on the town-seal his device is found,
Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a three-foil ground
With _Vinum, Linum, et Textrinum_ wound."

Virginia was earlier even in awakening interest in manufacturing fla