Halfway Brook

Hemp and flax were two major crops in early New England. The age old lengthy, labor-intensive procedure of processing the flaxen or blond-colored fibers of flax plants into linen thread, was still used in the 1770s by David Hickok, a descendant of William and Elizabeth Hitchcock.

Rippling, Retting, Dressing
• Flax is harvested about a hundred days after it is planted. The three- to four-foot tall plant is pulled up from the roots to get the longest fibers. The stalks are drawn through the teeth of a rippling comb or threshed with a flax flail to remove the seeds.

• The stems are retted (or rotted) in water or in a field (using 
the dew) to release the soft fibers. When dry, the three-step 
process: breaking, scutching, and heckling, separates the fiber from the straw-like stalks.

• A wooden brake breaks the woody core into short sections, loosening the flax fibers. A wooden scutching knife or paddle is used to scrape the remaining fibers from the outer stalk.

• The separated fibers are drawn a number of times through different size heckles or heckling combs. The rows of different size iron tines on the “combs” remove the remaining pulp and the shorter coarser strands of fiber, called tow.

• The fibers are sorted according to fineness. The longer fibers (up to three feet) can be spun into linen thread, used to bind books, make shoes, or for twine. The tow can be used for rougher linen yarns or rope.

Linen Thread
To make linen thread, the longer, fine flax fibers were wrapped around the distaff—a long vertical pole attached to a spinning wheel. The spinner then spun “a long, even thread from the mass of fiber” and wound it onto bobbins or spools.

“When the bobbins were full,” the spinner wound “the thread off on a reel into knots and skeins…” It was a good day’s work to spin two skeins of twenty knots each, every knot having forty threads.”—Buel, The Tale of the Spinning Wheel, 35–37.

Samuel and Joseph Hicox/Hickok, the two sons of William and Elizabeth Hitchcock, grew up in Farmington. Each of the brothers was married with children when they left Farmington for the new plantation Mattatuck (later called Waterbury), Connecticut, sometime around 1680.

Flaunting Luxurious Habits
The fine material woven by Farmington’s skilled weavers gave townsfolk the opportunity of being on the best dressed list. Farmington folks were not concerned that their fine silk clothing was considered luxurious or gaudy by some Puritans. But Massachusetts Puritans saw things differently.

In 1667 a man from Farmington moved to Massachusetts “carrying thither the luxurious habits of his native village.” The man and “divers persons” were taken to Court for not only “wearing of silk” but wearing it “in a flaunting manner” and “for long hair and other extravagances.”

The Court said this was “contrary to honest and sober order and demeanor, not becoming a wilderness state.” His clothing was not appropriate for the “profession of Christianity and religion.” The Court fined him two shillings and six pence.—Julius Gay, “Farmington Papers,” pp. 160–1.

Mr. Sinner
In the early years anyone who was discovered working, 
traveling, hunting, or frequenting an inn on the Sabbath could be prosecuted and fined. Farmington seems to have been especially conscientious about what even those traveling through could do on the Sabbath.

One Mr. North, known as Sinner North, “did not take kindly to Puritan ways and never went to church.” The children called him Mr. Sinner, which he did not mind, because they were respectful. Mr. North lived in Farmington sometime after Joseph and Samuel Hickok had left for Mattatuck or Waterbury as it came to be called.—from Julius Gay, “Farmington Papers,” p. 109.

Farmington Towns
Farmington was later enlarged and eight new towns taken out, including Burlington and New Britain, where the family of Asa Hickok lived, in the early 1800s, before they moved to Lumberland.

Gristmills and sawmills were necessary for establishing 
towns.

In 1650 New London, Connecticut (fifty miles southeast of 
Farmington), John Elderkin built a gristmill for Gov. John 
Winthrop Jr.

Farmington’s John Bronson is thought to have built a sawmill and later sold it to Deacon Stephen Hart, 
before 1650. At some point Farmington also had a gristmill.”
—from Julius Gay, Farmington Papers, p. 271; and David N. Camp, History of New Britain, with Sketches of Farmington and Berlin, Connecticut, 1640–1889, p. 20.

“The main New London waterwheel was rebuilt in 1892; and rebuilt from the hub out in 1930. The original oak frame, with the exception of a few rafters and plate in the upper part of the roof (as of 1930) had not been replaced.”—Library of Congress, from Frances Manwaring Caulkins, History of New London, 1612–1680.

William Hitchcock, his wife Elizabeth and baby Samuel arrived on the Tunxis Plantation, in Connecticut before 1645, when the name was changed to Farmington.

William built their home, on his home lot, in the middle of Main Street. The young family had a view of mountains on the east. On the west, the Tunxis or Farmington River brimmed with salmon and shad (a fish in the herring family).

“Steeple hats and ‘sadd colors’ were typical of Puritan dress ways. Both men and women in New England did actually wear the broad-brimmed steeple hats of legend, historical revisionists notwithstanding.”

“A list of these ‘sadd colors’ in 1638 included ‘liver color, de Boys, tawny, russet, purple, French green, ginger lyne, deer colour, orange.'” Also, puce, 
Lincoln green, and philly mort (the color of a dead leaf).

Black “was reserved for the ruling elders and the governing elite.”

The above information: David H. Fischer, Albion’s Seed, pp. 140, 142.

It is the 1600s. You and your family plan to sail from England, 
across the Atlantic Ocean, to a new land (wilderness), sight 
unseen. What do you need to take that will last a year while you get settled?

At the top of the list are clothes and food: hogsheads of meal, barrels of pease, and oatmeal.

Suggested household items include, bedding, ironware, 
rugs, wool, linen, canvas, brass, pewter, leather bottles, drinking horns, candles, and soap.

You need seeds to grow your own food. Tools to help build your house and keep up your property include: axes, augers, scythes, shovels and spades, iron and lead, grindstones, barrels of pitch and tar, cables, cordage, chains, and hooks. Add munitions, fishing equipment, farm implements, animals and fodder (and hope there is room on the ship).

“An indentured servant counted on the employer for clothes and food. In 1635 Thomas Moore, on his way to Virginia, took cheese, butter, cloth, staffs, shirts, stockings, and other goods for his indentured servants.”—Alison Games, Migration and the 
Origins of the English Atlantic World, pp. 64–5.