"Reweaving Forgotten Histories": Learning about Lead Seals

Hi Fort Friends,

Often today, we overlook things like clothing tags because it might not be that important to the everyday person. But in the future, those clothing tags might be one of the best ways to see how items move from place to place. Lead cloth seals act exactly as that. These seals marked the size of cloth, its weight, the quality, where it’s from, and the makers and merchants that it went through. All of these things can allow archaeologists to trace where goods were coming from and how a textile that started in a workhouse in France made its way down rivers, canals, towns, cities, and oceans to find its way all the way here in present-day Niles.

Dr. Davis did an amazing job during the interview of highlighting the people and individuals involved with textile production, and for me it was one of the more interesting points. Making cloth was often reserved for lower class people during the off seasons, and any positions that might have gained any larger amount of money were held exclusively by men of a higher class. The work that went into the weaving, spinning, treating, dyeing, and finishing the cloth was strenuous, and sometimes toxic. These people are who made the global trade and economy possible at the time.

There were many different lead cloth seals found here at Fort St Joseph, but there were 3 in particular that I found especially interesting. The first is a seal from the city of Toulouse, which was a major producer for not just New France but also the entirety of Europe. The seal has an intricate ingraving depicting a rowboat and it is the Mariotte family seal, the merchant who sent the cloth over to New France. There were many different merchant families in France, and much like royal families they also made alliances and connections with one another in their own town and other French cities. So when the British took over New France, not just one or two of these merchants lost their money, but all of them did.

Another of the seals is from Mazamet, which is a bit surprising since, unlike the other places on this list, it is not a major manufacturer of cloth. Instead, this is a smaller town mostly known for their dairy sheep, not any wool or linen exports. The fact that this smaller town was able to get a giant shipment of cloth all the way across the ocean and over half a continent all the way to Fort St. Joseph shows just how interconnected all these places are!

One of my favorite places discussed during the lecture was the city of Nîmes, which was very famous for producing a specific type of cloth, a cloth that was from or “de” the town of Nîmes, de Nîmes, denim! Denim is not just stylish and hardy now but it was also used right here all the way back in the 1700s! So technically, if you were to wear a denim jacket to a reenactment, that’s historically accurate (kinda, it’s close enough). The lead seal she discussed, left, was found last year by students in the field school! 

Overall the textile industry in France and in New France was a massive part of the economy and was one of the many ways the colony was linked heavily to France. These lead seals are able to tell us exactly how the two were connected and how far a single piece of fabric had to travel. And how much the colony economically influenced France, so that when it was lost it caused so much economic change back in France. Textiles are one of the few products that everyone always needed, and the next time you see your favorite shirt, take a look at the tag and see where it has been.

-R.C.