Handmade History, Episode 5: A Brief History of Broom Making in the US

Handmade History Podcast, Episode 5: A Brief History of Broom Making in the US

Show Notes

This podcast covers the history of broom making in the US, especially in early Colonial America (and parts of the country which became New England)

First: What is a broom?

A bunch of brushy stuff gathered around a stick
Made and used all over the world
Used with one hand, used with two hands
Sweep the floor, sweep other surfaces

We are going to talk about the origins of the broom that is most common in the US. It’s tall, meant to be used with two hands, and it has a flat bunch of stiff bristles at the bottom. Sometimes these are plastic now, but other times they are a natural fiber, which we will talk about later.

Fun fact: You can make your own broom

Broom making has a long tradition here in the US

It has a long tradition everywhere: one modern broommaker, Alyssa Blackwell, said in an article “Sweeping is a universal human act.”
So we are going to begin with written and oral histories of broommaking in the US

Broommaking and Native Americans

Prior to the Colonial era, Native Americans made brooms, because everyone in the whole world makes brooms. (Similarly, Europeans made brooms)
Plants native to the US that can be used to make brooms include beargrass, panic grass, and sideoats gramma
Broom handles can be made from sassafras, hickory, oak, maple, sycamore, hawthorn
Can also use cholla cactus, yucca, mesquite, white oak, pecan, and easter cedar

In the Colonial era, broom making became associated with Native Americans

A few reasons why:

Native Americans were displaced from original homes
Communities were destabilized because of disease and massacre
Forced to participate in a new economic system that they were not allowed to create themselves
Excluded from white society, not hired in local jobs
They had lost their land and thus couldn’t become farmers, which was a big part of the colonial American economy

Broommaking provided one of the only means to make money that Native Americans were allowed in this new system, along with basket making, chair bottoming, and mat making

A lot of the following in this section comes from this article from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts

Why broom making?

It was a place where Native skill met a white colonial demand
Because, as we mentioned, sweeping is a universal human need
Materials were foraged instead of grown, so anyone could access them
Skills needed were “Not hard to learn,” thought they “took time to practice them well”
Didn’t take long to make brooms (compared to, say, growing a field of corn). Could be done seasonally, allowing people to diversify their income streams–original sources mention Native American men and women peddling brooms in one season and baskets in another
Could be peddled on foot
Provided a regular source of income: Because brooms wore out and are so necessary, could do a circuit, visiting the same people over a period of time
[“Many Native Americans utilized local, natural materials to earn livelihoods that in turn helped sustain their identity as [Native Americans].”]

For many of the same reasons, other marginalized or disadvantaged groups also made brooms or similar handcrafts we mentioned before (like mat making)

some examples include poor white families with no land, families of mixed race who were excluded from other economic opportunities, formerly enslaved Black folks, people with disabilities

How brooms were actually made:

Called “Indian”, “peeled”, “splinter” or just birch brooms
Made from one long piece of wood, usually ash or birch
It would be both handle and broom
The ends were slivered over and over again until there was a thick, round broom

We are going to talk about the commercialization of broom making in the US, but I want to note two things:

Native Americans kept making brooms, even after white American manufacturing of brooms became more dominant

Watercolor of three Maliseet women peddling brooms from the 1820s

In at least one instance, it was recorded that Native Americans had locally respected hereditary rights to cut down any trees they wanted to make brooms (in Windsor, CT)
This handcraft was a vehicle for Native Americans to retain some agency over land that they had lost to colonists

Early commercialization of broom making in the US

Levi Dickinson, a farmer in Hadley, MA, planted broom corn, also called sorghum
Broom corn is the natural fiber we mentioned earlier
The plant looks like corn, but it is only tassels and seeds
You can use the seeds to feed pigs
Levi Dickinson used the tassels to make brooms
Dickinson wanted to make this a business, and he said “his local broom business would someday be one of the greatest in the country”
He was working at a time when the government began to promote American trade and manufacture–after the Revolutionary War
Interesting to think about this: before the Revolutionary War, America was a resource exploited by other countries, and there were lots of imports and exports
After the Revolutionary War, there was a drive to become self-sufficient (as a country)
There was also somewhat of a shift in the economics of farming.
If you’ve ever read the children’s book The Ox-Cart Man, this is what people think of as the idealized Colonial farmer:

The ox-cart man and his family make everything they need, right on the farm
Once a year, the ox-cart man brings the extra things they’ve made, including brooms, to Portsmouth, NH, the big city at the time
The ox-cart man trades his goods, sells his ox, and buys treats and necessities for his family (like a sewing needle all the way from England and peppermint candies)
He returns home and the cycle begins again
So this is the mostly self-sufficient farm system that was going on. Even in this example, you can see there is some international trade

but in the late 1700s/early 1800s, people started to farm cash crops, like broomcorn
This meant that they were not farming anything they could necessarily use, and were no longer mostly self-sufficient
For example, you could plant an acre of broom corn and make a few hundred brooms, which you could then sell for money, and use the money to buy the food and other things that you needed

Some people didn’t like this–they thought that having a more economically independent farm was safer and/or more noble
The reality was, farming coexisted with broom-making, and even though MA did experience an economic boom, broom-making was a side hustle for most farmers

Once again, the low barrier to entry allowed broom-making to boom among white farmers in MA
Before the 1820s, brooms were made, sold, and bartered locally
By 1831, 7 towns in Western Massachusetts made more than 1 million brooms per year
Other towns began to jump on the train; they supplied broom handles
Brooms were sold in Boston and New York–a big driver of the boom was better transit, including the Boston-Hudson Valley rail line and the Northampton-New Haven canal
First broom making machine was patented in 1844 by JH Hinton
Another patented in 1849 by J. Thomas - this looks like a flat broom press

The flat broom

The flat broom was invented by Shakers
Shakers were an American religious sect. They founded communities and lived together, took in orphans.
The thing that most people remember about them is that they are celibate
Alicia once watched a documentary about the last Shakers living in a community in New England. There were two left and one of them fell in love with a photographer who came up to write a story about them, so then there was only one left.
I could be misremembering this. But the love story happened. Would someone please write that book
The Shakers were started by Mother Ann Lee (and others). Mother Ann Lee said “Good spirits will not live where there is dirt”
Shakers a reputation for cleanliness and quality made goods
A community in Watervliet NY grew first crop of broomcorn in 1798
They invented the flat broom press after that–the patent that I found for a machine made by J Thomas in 1849 might be this press.
Flat brooms are what most people picture as brooms today, so the style has lasted

The economics of broom making in the mid-1800s in New England

Despite the boom in broom-making, there were “no broom moguls” in Massachusetts
Broom making remained a fairly egalitarian undertaking
In Hadley in 1841, there were 41 broom-making businesses, most were owned by 1-2 people, usually related
12 were one-man microbusinesses
One had 11 employees, the rest had 6 or less
Only 11 full-time broommakers; rest were farmers
How it worked:

A farmer would plant some broom corn
Open a broom shop
Hire other young men to do the work and run the shop
The other men might live on the farm

A lot of times the hired men were immigrants, including some from France, Ireland, and Canada
Again, broom making was a way into the local economy

Broom making could also be a substituted for land; if a farmer had too many sons and didn’t have enough land to give each of them, he could give one of his sons the broom-making business
Prevented younger sons from leaving the community to seek their fortune
May be a reason why all of the broom-makers listed were men, because women can easily make brooms
It is highly likely that women were making brooms and just not being paid or credited

Broom making in MA peeked in 1850s and 1860s
Declined after the civil war
There was better transit to the midwest, and broom corn grew better out there
By 1895, only 8 broom makers left in the area

Broom making in the rest of the US

US remained a major exporter of brooms
In 1897, a Scientific American article said: “We send brooms to Central America, South America, and South Africa, to the UK, and to France and Germany”

“Used to send to Australia, but now send broom corn and machines”
“We send now and then a little lot to China.”

1939, US produced 7 million dozen brooms
Brooms made and broom corn grown in Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Appalachia (which includes parts of PA, GA, Alabama, and Mississippi)
By 1950s, synthetic brooms started to be made
Over the next decade, broom corn began to be imported from Mexico because it was much cheaper
Broom-making experienced an overall decline in the US
Until…2020!
The pandemic revitalized broom making
broom sales in America went up by $10 million that year

We would like to shout out Folkwear Patterns. They are a small company based in Asheville, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene. Excellent pattern company that makes historic patterns that you can make and wear–lots of instructions for modern sewists. We aren’t sponsored by them, we just think they are awesome! And it’s a good time to support a company in NC.

Listen and subscribe to Handmade History wherever you listen to podcasts!

Email us at handmadehistoryhosts@gmail.com - we’d love to hear your suggestions!

Thanks for listening!

Happy Halloween!

Sources:

https://craftindustryalliance.org/whats-new-in-craft-broom-making/

https://www.newmexicomagazine.org/blog/post/santa-fe-repurposed-brooms-and-brushes/

https://web.archive.org/web/20121119131923/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/B/BR024.html

https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=CH021#:~:text=The%20September%2016%2C%201893%2C%20Cherokee,and%20a%20number%20of%20deaths.

https://blog.shakervillageky.org/tag/shaker-brooms/

https://saudervillage.org/explore/craftsmen/broom-making

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4287768?searchText=broom%20making&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dbroom%2Bmaking%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A4b377d9199a18bf9b90868efe5cf2436

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26391755?searchText=broom%20making&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dbroom%2Bmaking%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A4b377d9199a18bf9b90868efe5cf2436

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26116020?searchText=broom%20making&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dbroom%2Bmaking%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A4b377d9199a18bf9b90868efe5cf2436

Nobles, Gregory H. “Commerce and Community: A Case Study of the Rural Broommaking Business in Antebellum Massachusetts.” Cultivating a Past: Essays on the History of Hadley, Massachusetts, edited by Marla R. Miller, University of Massachusetts Press, 2009, pp. 232–49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vk569.15. Accessed 18 Sept. 2024.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/30072478?searchText=broom+making&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dbroom%2Bmaking%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A4b377d9199a18bf9b90868efe5cf2436

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1255661

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43917911

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1256101?searchText=broom%20making&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dbroom%2Bmaking%26so%3Drel%26pagemark%3DeyJwYWdlIjoyLCJzdGFydCI6MjUsInRvdGFsIjo0MTI3NH0%253D%26groupefq%3DWyJzZWFyY2hfYXJ0aWNsZSIsInJldmlldyIsInNlYXJjaF9jaGFwdGVyIiwiY29udHJpYnV0ZWRfdmlkZW8iLCJjb250cmlidXRlZF9hdWRpbyIsInJlc2VhcmNoX3JlcG9ydCIsIm1wX3Jlc2VhcmNoX3JlcG9ydF9wYXJ0IiwiY29udHJpYnV0ZWRfdGV4dCJd&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3Aee51fe339653f5cf9f2d71ac96216c15

https://www.wildflower.org/magazine/native-plants/deep-sweep

https://terralingua.org/langscape_articles/the-sweeping-dance-cultural-revival-environmental-conservation-and-the-art-of-broom-making-in-st-lucia/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2023/11/03/craft-brooms-enjoy-increased-popularity/

https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/1409

https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2021/06/21/the-magic-of-hand-made-brooms/#google_vignette

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/this-kentucky-college-has-been-making-brooms-for-100-years-180976106/

https://plainsmanherald.com/2017/01/435/

US Patent search site: https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/static/pages/ppubsbasic.html

J. Thomas’ patent: #6717, Sept. 8, 1849

J.H. Hinton’s patent: #3483, Mar. 13, 1844

Books:

The Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall (pictures by Barbara Cooney) (affiliate link)