Whalers' Women: Sewing for Subsistence and Sanity in 19th Century New Bedford, Massachusetts

The port city of New Bedford, Massachusetts owed much to the living its whalemen took from the sea, hunting for baleen, whalebone, and oil from the mid-1700s. The women of New Bedford and its surrounding communities were well acquainted with the realities of sewing work - paid and unpaid - in support of the whaling industry. This paper will discuss how New Bedford’s women embraced the “all-consuming process of sewing” as a means of emotional, financial, and social support during the nineteenth century heyday of the city’s whaling industry, drawing on the city’s museum and archival collections. Whalers’ womenfolk faced hardships and challenges whether on land or at sea: needlework was both a limiting and a liberating factor in their lives as they strove to earn a living and/or craft a life.
Presented by Madelyn Shaw
Madelyn Shaw is a curator and author specializing in the exploration of American culture and history, and its international connections, through textiles and dress. She has held curatorial and administrative positions at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution; the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design; New Bedford Whaling Museum; The Textile Museum, Washington DC; and the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC. Her new book, tentatively titled Fleeced: A History of Wool, War, and Why it Matters, with Australian co-author Trish FitzSimons, will be published in 2025 by Rowman & Littlefield/Bloomsbury.