culture of indigo. To Mrs. Pinkney, Grace Fisher and Suzanna Wright belongs the credit of having made the first silk manufactured on American soil. King James I had sent over some silk-worm cocoons for experiments in the colonies, and these three women succeeded in raising the silk-worms and in spinning and weaving silk of such fine quality that it was used for the garments of English royalty. A mere slip of a girl, Betsey Metcalf, living at Dedham, Mass., was the first to manufacture straw hats in this country. In 1789 she invented a method of bleaching and braiding the meadow grass that grew around her native town, and her bonnets soon became so popular that many women from neighboring towns and villages came to learn her art. Thus the foundation for a flourishing industry was laid, and making straw hats soon became an important remunerative occupation for women. Eliza Lucas Pinkney, one of the three women who manufactured the first American silk, also established the culture of indigo. By untiring efforts and experiments she succeeded in raising the indigo plant and in manufacturing indigo dye that later became an important article of exportation. Indigo was one of the chief agricultural products of our South until it was replaced by the more profitable cultivation of cotton.
During the Revolutionary War, when military service took the men away from their homes, and when many were killed or crippled in battle, stern, economic necessity drove greater numbers of women into the business world, and compelled them to take the places vacated by the men of their families. One of the business women of Revolutionary days was the mother of Thomas Perkins, of Salem, who inherited his mother's business ability and became one of the great American merchants of the early nineteenth century. Helen Campbell, in "Women Wage Earners," tells us that Mrs. Perkins, left widowed in 1778. "took her husband's place in the counting-house, managed business, despatched ships, sold merchandise, wrote letters, all with such commanding energy that the stolid Hollanders wrote to her as to a man." In the South many women managed large farms and plantations while the men were away at war. Among these was Abigail Adams, the wife of the second President of the United States.
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