Thursday April 28, 1768
Coldengham, New York
Store of Cadwallader Colden, Jr.
Sticks of Mohair
Johannis Felter purchased one stick of mohair at the Colden store on this day, 250 years-ago.
Mohair is goat hair which has presumably been spun into yarn and wound on a stick. The price of a stick of Mohair was one-half shilling. That is too cheap to be a fabric as suggested by the transcribers of the Ramsey Store Ledger.
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This article is one in a series of a daily accountings of Colden Store transactions. Be sure you read the first installment for an introduction to the store. You should also read this article which appeared in the Journal of the Orange County Historical Society.
In the prior eight months, Colden sold 270 sticks of mohair. It was often purchased with fabric, buttons, thread, and silk. It may have been a thread-substitute for special purposes.
Webster defined mohair in 1828 as "The hair of a kind of goat in Turkey, of which are made camlets, which are sometimes called by the same name." A camlet was defined by Webster as "stuff." He defines "stuff" as "Cloth; fabrics of the loom; as silk stuffs; woolen stuffs. In this sense the word has a plural. Stuff comprehends all cloths, but it signifies particularly woolen cloth of slight texture for linings."
Unfortunately, those definitions do not add clarity to what a stick of mohair really looked like and what it was used for.
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