But our own immediate foremothers beckon us, and we must linger no longer in ancient times and foreign lands. What have the spinning-wheels here to tell us, as they lie gathering the dust of a century in some old musty garret—though an irate New England house-wife might declare that not even the dust of a week ever gathered in her garret—or are brought down to the “best parlor,” where they stand in honorable retirement tied up with ribbon? We know that at least every other one of them must have “come over” in the Mayflower, else how could so many yarns have been spun regarding the capacity of our ancestral ship? Here is a wool-wheel[1] (see illustration), not so old as many others, perhaps, but all the more interesting for that, inasmuch as it proves how recently the real old homespun held its place amongst us. This wheel is a little out of the common. It was made by one William Hopkins, a resident of Litchfield, for his daughter, Nicy Melinda, about 1825. William Hopkins was a direct descendant of Joseph Harris, one of Litchfield’s pioneers, who fell a victim to the tomahawk on Harris Plains in 1723. He had married Mary Hopkins of West Hartford, and lived just below the Symington Cottage. His daughter Abigail married a cousin Asa Hopkins, and their son Harris married Margaret Peck, sister of Paul Peck, “the mighty hunter,” and became the father of William Hopkins of the spinning-wheel. William was a clever mechanic, and made this wheel to suit Nicy’s particular fancy. It has two heads instead of one,—a new and an old fashioned one,—and the edge of the wheel is narrow and has a little groove in it instead of being broad and flat. Nicy Melinda married John A. Woodruff, and lived on a farm this side of the Town-house first; then they sold out there and came into Litchfield, where they took up a residence on West Street. She died in 1888. She was Woodruff’s second wife, and her step-daughter, Mrs. Abbie M. Woodruff Newcomb, has loaned to the Litchfield Historical Society a collection of linen spun and woven by her. It consists of sheets, pillow-slips, as they were called, and table-cloths; and there is also a red broadcloth cloak entirely home-made. Her reel is also still in existence, and has been presented to this Society. The illustration shows the marking on the linen worked by her in black sewing-silk, the fine threads being counted at every stitch. Think of the labor represented by every inch of this linen, whose sheen is hardly surpassed by the finest silk or satin, made on a lonely Connecticut farm by a busy woman, for whom it was only one of innumerable other tasks. Perhaps we had best pause here to outline this process of linen manufacture, that we may the better understand what the work of women like Nicy Melinda meant to our country in her time, but more particularly in the earlier times of the colonies and the Revolution. In speaking of the patriotic devotion of the men in