Our Blackwells were involved in the early phases of the industrial revolution. For centuries, textile production remained unchanged. Women (called spinsters) used spinning wheels to turn flax fibers into linen thread or wool into yarn. Then, either garments were hand-knitted from the yarn — or a loom was used to weave the threads or yarns into fabric – which could be cut and hand sewn into garments.
This began to change in 1764 with the invention of the spinning jenny [https://www.thoughtco.com/who-invented-the-spinning-jenny-4057900], greatly increasing the amount of thread or yarn one person could produce in a day, A few years later, a way was found to power spinning machines by water wheels, rather than by hand. Mechanizing the spinning process greatly increased the demand for wool – which up to this time had mostly been exported to Flanders [now part of Belgium].
In Scotland the increased demand lead to “The Enclosures” – in which clan chieftains evicted tenant farmers from the small, subsistence plots they’d been farming, built fences to form pastures, and grew wool for exporting. Many of those evicted tenants had no way of making a living and migrated to the colonies to survive – often indenturing themselves to buy passage. They (and their whiskey making skills) often ended up in the Appalachians because the fertile farm lands along the coasts and rivers had already been claimed.
The demand for wool seemed like a godsend to the Cotswolds – they already had sheep and good pastures — and swift flowing streams like the River Stroud were ideally suited to powering water wheels. Our Blackwells owned and operated several early factories. Unfortunately, the new industry went through some cycles of “boom and bust” – eventually inspiring our Blackwells to use their wealth to emigrate to America in 1805.
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