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Archiver > IRL-CAVAN > 1999-08 > 0934235790


From: "PKostelnik" <>
Subject: RE: Spinning Wheel List - what it means
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 17:56:30 -0400


Hi,

In answer to a question asked a few days ago regarding what the Spinning Wheel List really is all about, here is my understanding of it:

The Spinning Wheel List is a list of persons in Ireland to whom premiums were paid for the sowing of Flax-seed in the year 1796. If a person sowed the seed between the 10 day of March and the 1st day of June, 1796 on land fit for the purpose and well prepared, they would be awarded according to the amount of land planted:

1 acre or more 4 spinning wheels
3 roods 3 spinning wheels
2 roods 2 spinning wheels
1 rood 1 spinning wheel

To any person who should sow in like manner 5 acres or more, they would be awarded a Loom, or Wheels, Reels or Hatchells to the Value of 50 shillings. For every 5 Acres over and above the first 5 acres, a like premium.

Most farmers were awarded one spinning wheel. More than that would indicate a more prosperous farm. In scanning the list, I saw indication that only one farmer was awarded a Loom and that was Phelix DUNN of the Parish of Lurgan.

The growing of Flax was difficult and involved retting and scutching and was intensive work. It paid well, and many farmers devoted a small portion of their land for the growing of it. Those were the days when Linen was important in Ireland. Most farmers were also weavers in their own homes.

In some parts of Co. Cavan, the land was rocky or otherwise not fertile enough to grow flax. Some farms were too small to allow for anything other than food for the family to be grown on it. Many people lived 'in town' and had no farm land at all. None of those people would appear on the Spinning Wheel List, even though they may have been living in Co. Cavan in the year 1796.

The Spinning Wheel List is really just a Census substitute for a time period in which there is nothing else to indicate who was living there. As such, it is a good source, but not a complete one. If you cannot find your family in the List, just keep searching in other ways.

I hope that I have explained it to the satisfaction of those who did not understand what the List was all about.

Patricia Kostelnik

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