9 - Pennsylvania and Sericultural Revolution

Summary

Pennsylvania was one of the latest American regions to pursue sericulture, and offers the best illustration of how silken ambitions survived and were reshaped to fit new political and economic environments in the Revolutionary era. Pennsylvanian silk swung from being a dutiful imperial pursuit, albeit one with particular local characteristics, to being an objective very much in step with American independence. It constituted a unique kind of homespun that came to embody not only domestic elegance but also provided ammunition for broader debates over political economy and the future identity of American industrial development. Philadelphia, situated in the heart of the North American colonies, was the first home of the Continental Congress, the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, and the site of the federal capital for ten years between 1790 and 1800. Before all that, it was also the location of the mid-Atlantic’s first silk filature. The production owed much to the creation of a Silk Society by progressive gentlemen, but much of the labour was performed by women in households and communities in the city’s hinterlands.