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Textiles have always been central to my life. On my maternal side every woman made braided or hooked rugs, quilts, tailored clothing, or knit like experts. My maternal grandfather though was superintendent of one of the last worsted wool mills in New England. My favorite thing from age 8 onward was to go to “the mill” with him on Saturday mornings. As he caught up on things I’d follow from department to department fascinated by everything from spinning, to weaving, and finishing. On those Saturdays he told me the history of our family from the eighteenth century onward who worked the Yorkshire mills. Census and other records I’ve found record the jobs over 200 years that range from bobbin boy, to sewer, weaver, finisher, and later generations supervisors and finally Superintendents of mills. From my grandmother’s side I learned of her own family Yorkshire textile history that included an ancestor, William Horsfall, who was famously assassinated by Luddites in 1812 for bringing in mechanization to his mill.
I badly wanted to follow this family path but, by the time I was finishing high school my grandfather was nearing retirement and was frank about the textile industry moving both south and overseas. So, I followed another path, eventually earned a Ph.D. and had a career as a university professor. But I never lost my passion for textiles in any form and moving to New Mexico I finally took weaving courses, got a loom (and eventually five…), and weaving became my life and passion. Although I originally intended to weave cloth yardage, discovering Navajo-Churro wool I somehow, instead, became a dedicated rug weaver. My grandfather is long gone but I think he would both be proud another generation found a way to carry on in textiles---and amused that my main floor loom is partially “mechanized” with a motorized warp extender and shaft switching in what I like to think of as “true Horsfall tradition.” - Gretchen Adams
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