Virginia, and proved on trial to be of excellent quality both for show and use.[1]
In spite of the repeated instructions given by the authorities in England to the Governors of Virginia, in the long interval between 1612 and 1646, to promote the cultivation of flax, no persistent effort was made until the last year to manufacture linen in any quantity. In 1646, the General Assembly decided upon the erection of two houses at Jamestown for this purpose. They were to be built of substantial timber and were to be forty feet in length, twenty in width, and eight in pitch. The roofs were to be covered with boards properly sawed, and in the centre of each house, brick chimneys were to be placed. Each house was to be divided into rooms by convenient partitions. The different counties were respectively required to furnish two children, male or female, of the age of eight or seven years at least, whose parents were too poor to educate them, to be instructed in the art of carding, knitting, and spinning. In order that ample provision might be made for the health and comfort of the pupils, each county was required to supply the two children whom it sent, with six barrels of Indian corn, a sow, two laying hens, linen and woollen apparel, shoes, hose, a bed, rug, blanket, two coverlets, a wooden bowl or tray, and two pewter spoons. This law, whether fully carried out or not, reveals the interest which was felt in the Colony at this time in the manufacture of linen.[2]
It was during this period of colonial history that Captain Mathews, who resided at Blunt Point on the Lower James, was offering to the people of Virginia a notable illustration of the ease with which a planter, by skilful management of property, could procure within the bounds
