The Cape May Mitten Trade: Benjamin Franklin’s Contribution to
the Colonial Economy of the Jersey Cape
By J. P. Hand
One of the most remarkable tales of old Cape May centers on the county’s mitten
trade, and Benjamin Franklin’s claim that he and his wife inadvertently created the
industry. By the mid 1700s, this cottage industry was the fourth largest source of
income in colonial Cape May.1 The story was first recorded by Franklin himself in a
letter addressed to his good friend and publisher Benjamin Vaughan.2 In his lengthy
letter to Vaughan, dated July 26, 1784, Franklin covered a variety of topics. In
particular, he revealed his opinions on the evils of luxury and excess, especially among
his fellow Americans.
The following excerpt from that letter tells the story in Franklin’s own words:
I have not yet thought of a Remedy for Luxury. I am not sure that in a great
State it is capable of a Remedy. Nor that the Evil is in itself always so great as
it is represented. Suppose we include in the Definition of Luxury all
unnecessary Expence, and then let us consider whether Laws to prevent such
Expence are possible to be executed in a great Country; and whether if they
could be executed, our People generally would be happier or even richer. Is
not the Hope of one day being able to purchase and enjoy Luxuries a great
Spur to Labour and Industry? May not Luxury therefore produce more than it
consumes, if without such a Spur People would be as they are naturally enough
inclined to be. Lazy and indolent? To this purpose I remember a
Circumstance. The Skipper of a Shallop employed between Cape May and
Philadelphia, had done us some small Service for which he refused to be paid.
1
Maurice Beesley, MD, Sketch of the Early History of the County of Cape May (Trenton, NJ: Office of the True
American, 1857), p. 192.
2
Benjamin Vaughan, the son of Samuel and Sarah (Hallowell), was born in Jamaica in 1751. He held both law and
medical degrees, but never formally practiced either profession. He worked as a banker for his brother-in-law in
London, was a Parliamentary reformer and close friend of the Earl of Shelburne, helped negotiate for peace
between England and the American colonies in 1782, left England for political reasons in 1794, and moved to
Hallowell, Maine with his family in 1797. There he pursued his interest in science, philosophy, and agriculture.
Benjamin Vaughan married in 1781. [http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0040, accessed 8-132010]
My Wife understanding that he had a Daughter, sent her as a Present a newfashioned Cap. Three Years After, this Skipper being at my House with an old
Farmer of Cape May his Passenger, he mentioned the Cap and how much his
Daughter had been pleased with it; but says he it proved a dear Cap to our
Congregation—How so? When my Daughter appeared in it at a Meeting, it
was so much admired, that all the Girls resolved to get such Caps from
Philadelphia; and my Wife and I computed that the whole could not have cost
less than a hundred Pound. True says the Farmer, but you do not tell all the
Story; I think the Cap as nevertheless an Advantage to us; for it was the first
thing that put our Girls upon Knitting worsted Mittens for Sale at Philadelphia,
that they might have wherewithal to buy Caps and Ribbands there; and you
know that that Industry has continued and is likely to continue and increase to
a much greater Value, and answers better Purposes. Upon the whole I was
more reconciled to this little Piece of Luxury; since not only the Girls were
made happier by having fine Caps, but the Philadelphians by the Supply of
warm Mittens.3
After Franklin’s death in 1790, his Cape May mitten tale was included in many of the
obituaries marking his death in papers up and down the eastern seaboard. Fig. 1 The
story grew legs, as they say, and was reprinted for decades. News-starved editors in
colonial and federal America borrowed articles from other papers regularly, so the
story was familiar to much of the reading public throughout the country. Franklin’s
tale of the beginnings of the Cape May mitten trade appeared in such papers as The
Norwich Courier (Connecticut, 1799), The Weekly Wanderer (Vermont, 1806) and as late
as 1831 in The Baltimore Gazette & Daily Advertiser and The Connecticut Mirror.
3
Benjamin Franklin Papers, letter of Franklin to Vaughan, July 26, 1784.
[http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedNames.jsp, accessed 8-13-2010]
Figure 1: obituary of Franklin as it appeared in numerous papers, including this one in the Norwich Packet
on May 28, 1790.
We have no reason to doubt Franklin’s anecdote, but how much of an effect his
wife’s gift of a cap had on the textile industry in Cape May can be questioned.
Unfortunately, though we know that his letter was written in 1784, Franklin didn’t cite
the year the incident, or as he termed it a “circumstance,” took place. Young Ben
Franklin fled Boston and arrived in Philadelphia in 1726. He married Deborah Read
in 1730, 4 so the event in question took place sometime between that year and 1774,
the year his wife died.5
The textile industry began in Cape May with the arrival of the whaler/yeomen in the
late 17th century, primarily from Long Island, N. Y., East Jersey, and New England.
Seventy families had settled on the Cape by the year 1699.6 Many of these whaler
farmers practiced other trades as well. Original settlers John Parsons, Ezekiel
Eldredge, Peter Corson, John Stillwell, and Arthur Cresse Jr. are listed as weavers in
early deeds and wills.7 The trade was important enough that by the 1730s, a fulling
mill to treat and clean the homespun cloth of Cape May’s housewives and weavers
had been erected at the headwaters of Fishing Creek in Lower Precinct. In 1735, mill
owner Captain Richard Downs advertised the following:
To be sold A very good Fulling Mill at Fishing Creek, in the
County of Cape May, with all the Materials, as Press , Shears, Tenters, and
Copper; With one hundred acres of Land. Inquire of Richard Downs.
[Pennsylvania Gazette, 10-16-1735]
The wives and daughters of Cape May County’s whaler yeomen had been spinning
their own wool, and knitting worsted mittens and stockings for their family’s use since
their arrival on the Cape in the late 1600s. At some point this domestic chore evolved
into a major export industry. Stockings and caps were also produced and shipped to
Philadelphia and elsewhere, but the Cape May mittens (also referred to as “mitts”)
appear to have received most of the attention.
Fortunately, primary sources suggest just how early this cottage industry became an
important part of Cape May County’s economy. In his 1857 Sketch Of The Early
History Of The County Of Cape May,” Maurice Beesley M. D. not only repeated
4
Although Franklin and later historians refer to Deborah as his wife, there is no proof of their marriage and
modern historians refer to her as his common law wife.
5
Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 282.
6
New Jersey Archives, ii, p. 305.
7
see list compiled by Joan Berkey and found at http://www.cmcmuseum.org/berkey.htm.
Franklin’s tale, but more importantly he published an excerpt from the journal of
Jacob Spicer Jr. in which Spicer estimated the county’s exports/imports for the year
1758. Spicer was one of the most prominent figures in colonial Cape May and his
careful observations regarding the local economy reveal much about early life on the
Jersey cape. [fig. 2]
Fig. 2: excerpt from Spicer’s journal as it appeared in Beesley’s Early History of Cape May County, p. 192.
Beesley commented that the mitten article of trade in 1758, which amounted to the
sum of £500, was “quite a reward to the female industry of the county.”8
Spicer’s estimate shows that almost twenty years before the American Revolution, this
cottage industry supported by the labor of women and girls, ranked only behind
livestock, oysters, and cedar lumber in value of exports. It should be noted that
Spicer’s 1758 account of the local economy doesn’t show any exports from the
county’s celebrated whale fishery, although another contemporary journal, the “Lewis
Cresse Diary,” records whales being taken off the Cape May coast as late as1765.9 In
his journal, Cresse mentions that they went whaling in 1758, 1759, and 1760 but no
whales were taken.10
Another prominent county native, Aaron Leaming Jr., recorded important
information about the Cape May mitten trade in his journal as well. Leaming coauthored The Concessions and Agreements (a compendium of New Jersey’s first laws) with
Spicer while they both served in the Provincial Assembly. In a series of journals that
survive to this day, Leaming recorded the events of his personal life and business
affairs in great detail. Of the mitten trade, he observed the following in 1775:
Mr Holmes [John or Nathaniel11] says he takes 350 dozen of mittens in a year.
And 5 pairs must weigh a pound, and by his computation it seems that is about
one half of what the county produces, and it seems that a pound will make a
yard of cloth.
8
Beesley, p. 192.
9
Lewis Cresse, “The Whaler’s Diary,” Magazine of History and Genealogy, Cape May County Historical and
Genealogical Society, Cape May Court House, NJ, June 1968, p. 283.
10
11
Ibid., p. 280-281.
Brothers John and Nathaniel Holmes were both merchants in Cape May County when Leaming made this
comment in 1775. According to Leaming’s diary, Leaming and his son-in-law Jesse Hand had established a salt
works in Cape May County with John Holmes prior to 1777.
Mr Holmes says that as much as is bot [sic] out of the shops in a year.12
According to Leaming’s estimate for the year 1775, the women of Cape May
produced 700 dozen pairs of mittens for export. This translates into 8,400 pairs made
from 1,680 pounds of wool. Leaming’s estimate was for mittens only, and did not
include other woolen exports such as stockings and caps, or woolen goods knit for
home or local use. This shows an astonishing volume of production by the women
and girls on the Jersey cape at a time when the total population of the county was only
around two thousand.13
While Mrs. Franklin’s gift of a new-fashioned cap may have created this major
industry on the cape, the newspaper coverage of 1790, the year of Franklin’s death,
certainly helped promote the trade. Multiple contemporary newspaper advertisements
show that by 1790, the term “Cape May mitten” had become a brand name, perhaps
one of the first in the new republic. It appears that merchants and shopkeepers in
Philadelphia took advantage of this good press by identifying the origin of the mittens
they offered for sale, turning an ordinary product into an extraordinary one by
branding it.
The following newspaper advertisements illustrate that while imported textiles were
often identified by country of origin (e.g. Irish linens, Flanders bedticks, or India
calicoes), advertising the origin of domestically-produced wares was atypical.14 [fig. 3]
12
Aaron Leaming Diaries, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, (Phi)359, 1775 (Book 3).
13
Peter Wacker, Land and People (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1975), p.415.
14
Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 1-8-1793; Independent Gazetteer (Philadelphia), 1-2-1790);
Federal Gazette (Philadelphia), 12-31-1793; Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 1-1-1794.
Just how widespread was the manufacture of mittens for export among the women of
colonial Cape May? A careful study of the James Cochran ledger gives a remarkably
clear picture of the trade. Merchant James Cochran arrived in Cape May from parts
unknown by 1761 (the date of the earliest entry in his ledger).15 He recorded an
earmark for cattle with the County Clerk in 1765, and is listed on the county tax rolls
for Lower Precinct from 1768 to 1783. Cochran’s ledger contains entries for the years
1761 to 1776, with most of his business conducted during the 1760s.
It appears that Cochran traded primarily in the Lower and Middle Precincts. His
ledger is heavy with Crowells, Eldredges, Hands, and Stites, while Upper Precinct
names such as Corson, Townsend, and Willets are noticeably absent. Some of
Cochran’s debtors paid in cash only, while the majority of them used the barter
system to pay their tab. Typically, his customers would purchase goods such as
imported textiles, as well as grocery and hardware items, and then settle up with
Cochran at a later date. Accounts were paid with cash, or a combination of cash,
their own farm and manufactured products, and in some cases their labor.
James Cochran’s ledger contains approximately 262 accounts. Of these, 123 of the
debtors paid at least part of their bill with mittens. [see fig. 4] Interestingly, over 100
of the 262 account holders are women, which suggests a degree of financial
independence among colonial Cape May women that may surprise some readers. The
ledger reveals that in return for their hand-knit mittens, they received a large
assortment of goods. The most common items bartered were imported textiles,
though many entries list luxury items such as ribbons, combs, and quite a few silk
handkerchiefs.
Change came swiftly to post-Civil War Cape May: with the advent of steam-powered
machinery and the Industrial Revolution, the old ways of the whaler-yeomen quickly
disappeared. The mitten trade died out in Cape May at about the same time as the
centuries-old tradition of earmarking free-ranging cattle. The last Cape May earmark
was recorded to George H. Cresse in 1873.16 Two years earlier, in 1871, 69-year old
Mehitable Simpson (1802-1879) one of the last county women to produce mittens for
export, sold her sheep farm in Goshen.17 She died eight years later.
15
James Cochran Ledger (1761-1776), on loan to the Cape May County Historical and Genealogical Society, Cape
May Court House, NJ.
16
Earmark Book, Book B, Cape May County Clerk’s Office.
17
Vanaman Family File, Edwin Post Collection, Cape May County Historical and Genealogical Society.
An old letter in the files of the CMCH&GS records events in her life. Mehitable was
the daughter of Richard Vanaman, Revolutionary War veteran and Cumberland
County native, and Amy Smith of Goshen, Cape May County. Mehitable lived in
Goshen with her husband Samuel B. Wate/Wade (who carried his pregnant wife to
high ground during the great storm of September 1821), and after his death married
Samuel Simpson.18 They kept a tavern on the corner of Front and Green Street in
Philadelphia.19 Upon being widowed for the second time, she returned to Goshen and
in 1849 purchased her father’s old farm from her mother and stepfather. Here she
built a new house, kept store, and raised sheep as the following excerpts from the
letter reveal:
Mehitable Vanaman b. 1802 d. 1879
She was one of the last in Cape May Co. to raise the sheep, clip the wool, spin
the yarn, and knit the mittens and socks, which were carried by the Goshen
packets to the Philadelphia markets.
Mehitable Simpson is remembered as keeping a store in East Goshen, here she
raised poultry, sheep, and did some farming. Here she sheared her sheep,
carded their wool, spun yarn, knit caps, socks, and mittens for home and city
markets. Trading by packet sloops sailing via Goshen or Dennis Creeks.
It is surprising that the mitten trade, while obviously an important part of Cape May’s
colonial past is virtually unknown today, especially given the connection to Benjamin
Franklin, one of our country’s greatest historic figures. How could this industry that
was so well known in its time, that was noted by two of the county’s most prominent
colonial citizens in Spicer and Leaming, and that was recorded by Maurice Beesley,
our earliest county historian, have faded from our memories?
It may be that the mitten trade, though very important to the local economy, was not
as glamorous as some of the other industries on the cape. As a result, this cottage
industry has escaped the attention of modern historians while the efforts of the
county’s whalers, bay pilots, and ship builders have been well documented.
18
Ibid.
19
Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 9-27-1836.
Another factor that surely comes into play is the tendency of past historians and
genealogists, and present ones as well, to focus on the male history of the county. For
instance we refer to the Thomas Leaming House, or Shamgar Hand’s plantation, etc.
and the contributions of the Mrs. and misses in our county’s history are usually
overlooked. Lists of Cape May’s early settlers are composed of male landowners or
owners of cattle earmarks, though some of our earliest landowners were women and
many widows and unmarried women held earmarks.
We can try to imagine the never-ending domestic toil required to feed, clothe, and
nurse to good health a family in 18th-century Cape May. Cochran’s account book
clearly shows that in addition to their normal workload, many of the women and girls
of colonial Cape May also helped support their families financially through their
knitting. By producing an export product for which there was a steady demand in
urban markets, they helped insure financial stability for their families in a world often
made unstable by weather, war, and changing markets.
fig. 4a: Mersy Hedges’ account in Cochran’s ledger, debtor (dr) page showing the
items she purchased from Cochran.
fig. 4b: Mersy Hedges’ account in Cochran’s ledger, contra (credit) page showing that
her account was paid mostly with mittens.
fig. 5a: Silas Swain’s account in Cochran’s ledger, (debtor page) showing the items
his family purchased.
fig. 5b: Silas Swain’s account in Cochran’s ledger (contra page); note that his account
was paid in cash with the exception of one entry showing he was paid for delivering a
bag of mittens.