Made in Germantown: production, wear, and repair of American frame-knit stockings 1683-1830
Date
2020
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Just north of Philadelphia, the community of Germantown produced distinctive knit stockings on machinery known as knitting frames. Founded in 1683 by German immigrants with focuses on textile production, Germantown was subsequently celebrated for the domestic manufacturing potential in the colony of Pennsylvania and later the newly formed American nation. Durable and warm, these frame-knit stockings were a recognizable article of clothing worn by numerous early Americans, and could be found on the feet of tradesmen, indentured servants, apprentices, enslaved men, sailors, and Revolutionary War soldiers. No identified pairs of Germantown stockings survive, and their production is shrouded in mythology. This thesis traces the production, wear, and repair of Germantown stockings from 1683 to 1830 through material evidence of extant knitting frames and comparative stockings, in addition to account books and runaway advertisements. This thesis ultimately argues that the analysis of eighteenth-century Germantown stocking as an industry and a brand renders visible male German immigrants, networks of women integrally contributing to the life cycle of stockings, and bound laborers whose bodies risked detection by wearing recognizable articles of clothing as they fled their masters.
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Keywords
Germantown, Knit, Knitting frame, Material culture, Pennsylvania German, Stockings