Mrs. Washington not only managed the Mount Vernon household, but she looked after the spinning of yarn, the weaving of cloth and the making of clothing for the family and for the great horde of slaves.  At times, particularly during the Revolution and the non-importation days that preceded it, she had as many as sixteen spinning-wheels in operation at once.  The work was done in a special spinning house, which was well equipped with looms, wheels, reels, flaxbrakes and other machinery.  Most of the raw material, such as wool and flax and sometimes even cotton, was produced upon the place and never left it until made up into the finished product.

In 1768 the white man and five negro girls employed in the work produced 815-3/4 yards of linen, 365-1/4 yards of woolen cloth, 144 yards of linsey and 40 yards of cotton cloth.  With his usual pains Washington made a comparative statement of the cost of this cloth produced at home and what it would have cost him if it had been purchased in England, and came to the conclusion that only L23.19.11 would be left to defray the expense of spinning, hire of the six persons engaged, “cloathing, victualling, wheels, &c.”  Still the work was kept going.

A great variety of fabrics were produced:  “striped woolen, wool plaided, cotton striped, linen, wool-birdseye, cotton filled with wool, linsey, M’s and O’s, cotton Indian dimity, cotton jump stripe, linen filled with tow, cotton striped with silk, Roman M., janes twilled, huccabac, broadcloth, counter-pain, birdseye diaper, Kirsey wool, barragon, fustian, bed-ticking, herring-box, and shalloon.”

In non-importation days Mrs. Washington even made the cloth for two of her own gowns, using cotton striped with silk, the latter being obtained from the ravellings of brown silk stockings and crimson damask chair covers.

The housewife believed in good cheer and an abundance of it, and the larders at Mount Vernon were kept well filled.  Once the General protested to Lund Washington because so many hogs had been killed, whereupon the manager replied that when he put up the meat he had expected that Mrs. Washington would have been at home and that he knew there would be need for it because her “charitable disposition is in the same proportion as her meat house.”

[Illustration:  Weekly Report on the Work of the Spinners]

She had a swarm of relatives by blood and marriage and they visited her long and often.  The Burwells, the Bassetts, the Dandridges and all the rest came so frequently that hardly a week passed that at least one of them did not sleep beneath the hospitable roof.  Even her stepmother paid her many visits and, what is more, was strongly urged by the General to make the place her permanent home.  When Mrs. Washington was at home during the Revolution her son and her daughter-in-law spent most of their time there.  After the Revolution her two youngest grandchildren resided at Mount Vernon, and the two older ones, Elizabeth and Martha, were often there, as was their mother, who married as her second husband Doctor Stuart, a man whom Washington highly esteemed.