In 1812, Thomas Jefferson started a textile workshop in a building along Mulberry Row. In this building, a dozen enslaved women and girls wove coarse fabric to help clothe Monticello slaves. Girls began spinning and weaving around age 12 – the same time that boys learned nail-making.  The textile workshop featured two 18th-century inventions – the loom with a "flying shuttle" (1733) and the "spinning jenny" (1770) – that greatly increased the amount of cloth the enslaved spinners and weavers could make. Click around the image to learn more about the textile workshop. You can record your responses in the Mulberry Row handout. Guiding Questions:   1. What was life like for members of the enslaved community at Monticello? 2. What kind of work did members of the enslaved community do?

Enslaved women and girls worked in the textile workshop to make cloth that was used for clothing by enslaved workers at Monticello. 

By 1815, enslaved spinners, weavers, carders, and quillers made cloth from wool, hemp, and cotton in the textile shop. After raw material was brushed, or carded, into long fibers called roving, Aggy, a spinner, fed the roving onto a spinning jenny, which separated the fibers before twisting them into thread and winding them onto 24 different spools.

Once the raw flax, cotton, or wool fibers were spun into yarn, they could be woven on a large loom to make cloth. 

Watch the video to learn how the Spinning Jenny works. 

Fibers like flax, cotton, and wool could be spun on a single spinning wheel, or a larger machine like the Spinning Jenny. 

Nance Hemings (c. 1761 - after 1827) was an enslaved weaver at Monticello. 

Other enslaved textile workers at Monticello included: 

Cretia Hern (b. 1779), cotton spinner, 1815–

Harriet Hemings (1801–after 1822), wool spinner, 1815–

Isabel (1800–1822), hemp spinner, 1815–

Agnes Gillette (1798–1817), spinner, 1815–

Israel Gillette (1800–c. 1879), carder, 1815–

This stone building was one of the earliest structures built along Mulberry Row. It was constructed about 1776, and at first served as living quarters for free or enslaved workers at Monticello. By 1815, it was the textile workshop. The cloth made in this building provided clothing for as many as 140 enslaved men, women, and children on the plantation.

Standards for The Textile Workshop