Join us During Women’s History Month
for a Lecture by Emily Whitted

About this Event

Eighteenth-century Germantown, Pennsylvania housed a thriving knit stocking industry consisting of male operators of hand-powered machines known as knitting frames. Producing over 60,000 dozen pairs of stockings by 1757, the Germantown stocking industry was a shining example of early American domestic textile production. While not always explicit in archival sources, women were integral to this industry, spinning the stocking yarn needed for frame knitters and finishing stockings through a process called seaming. This talk examines eighteenth-century women’s skilled contributions to Germantown stocking production, whether as an unpaid part of their domestic roles or as formal income, and more broadly explores the structures of archival documents that keep women’s labor hidden in plain sight.

Emily Whitted is a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying the material culture of early American women and textile history. She also holds a Public History certificate with a concentration in museum studies. Emily is currently acting as an Exhibit Research Assistant at the Mercer Museum & Fonthill Castle and her past projects include work with the Leverett Historical Society, the Industrial Crafts Research Network, and the Winterthur Museum.

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