Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Brooms to Sweep Away Troubles

     A new broom brings good luck and harmony to a home. A traditional welcome gift includes: bread, that this house may never know hunger; salt, that life may always have flavor; and a broom, to sweep away troubles.
     In colonial American times, women cooked outside or in huge kitchen fireplaces. They needed a good broom to sweep away all the ashes. The brooms they called beson (pronounced bee-zum) consisted of bundled twigs, reeds, grasses, branches, and cornhusks tied together with hemp or flax and attached to a handle, usually a straight branch. In the mid-1700s, people began to fashion brooms from broomcorn, a plant from the sorghum family.
     Benjamin Franklin is said to have found a broomcorn seed on a broom a friend brought him from France for dusting his beaver hat. He obtained broomcorn seeds in Hungary, which he planted and which grew into tall corn-like plants with a flowering brush of stiff fibers.
Broomcorn, which had been cultivated in Asia and Africa since ancient times, became a novelty for gardens in Philadelphia.
     The first recorded broom in America, comprised of sorghum fibers, was made in 1797 by a man in Massachusetts, Levi Dickenson. Brooms came in many sizes and for various purposes--floor brooms, outdoor brooms, whisk brooms, brushes, and pot brooms used in the kitchens to clean away dust, debris, and ashes from fireplaces.
     For crafters: Step-by-step instructions for a broomcorn broom are in a post “How to Make a Broom,” by Little John Holzwart at: http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/how-to-make-a-broom.aspx#axzz2bsOJfKK3
     Sample instructions: To make a hearth broom, 28 heads of broomcorn are used for the inside layers of bristles and 17 heads for the outside layer. Each head is measured with a cubit (the distance between your elbow to your longest finger). Put the knuckle of the corn, the place where the head meets the stalk, at your elbow. If the bristles, or brush, are past the tip of your fingers, that stalk is a keeper. If the material is too short, it will be used for a whisk broom later.
     If you want to make your own broomcorn broom, there’s a great supplier: R.E. Caddy Co. in Greensboro, NC, that sells broomcorn for crafters, a 10-pound box is around $35. http://www.recaddy.com/ec/index.php?cPath=21&osCsid=3e296863797aa55eabcf601caaef3774
     A good resource for mixed colors broomcorn seeds is https://www.lehmans.com/p-4588-mixed-colors-broomcorn-seeds.aspx

Susan F. Craft is the author of The Chamomile, an inspirational Revolutionary War romantic suspense set in South Carolina.


8 comments:

  1. Susan, I found this post so very interesting. My husband and I own a brush company so brooms and brushes have been a part of our lives for many years. Thank you for sharing and thank you for what you do.

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    1. Hi, Melanie. So glad you liked the post. I did a post on the history of hair brushes on the blog http://colonialquills.blogspot.com, but I can't remember when it posted. It's been a while. You might like that one too. I'll try to find it and get back to you, unless you have time to go there and search.

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  2. What an interesting tidbit! Thanks for sharing, Susan.

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    1. Thanks, Crystal. I love doing research for my novels and running across these kinds of tidbits that I call "my treasures." I'm a history nerd :-)

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  3. I loved this post! As my mother, Melanie, mentioned, brooms and brushes are a big part of our lives! I love finding old brooms; it is so interesting to see how they have changed over the years!

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    1. Thank you, Britney. Please pass along to your mom this link to the post I was talking about on the Colonial Quills blog in which I talk about the history of combs and brushes --

      http://colonialquills.blogspot.com/2012/11/colonial-american-hairbrushes-and-combs.html


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  4. You're everywhere! Love all things Susan Craft!

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    1. Thank you, Karla. Hope your book launch is going well. Karla has written a book, The Pastor's Wife Wears Biker Boots." It will make you cry and make you laugh till you cry. Such a good read.

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