Life on a Cotton Plantation:
The Cotton Gin and Lowell Cloth
Document 15

Document 15: Cloth Purchases, Evans Plantation, Louisiana, 1858-1859 

In the early mid-nineteenth century, many Southern plantation owners purchased coarse cotton fabrics from Northern cotton manufacturers to make clothing for their enslaved people. One type of fabric widely used in the South was called “Lowell” cloth “negro cloth” or “Appleton cloth.” Produced in mills throughout the North, “Lowell” and “Appleton” cloth were named after inexpensive cotton cloth produced in factories established by Francis Cabot Lowell and Nathan Appleton.

This record is for purchases made for the Evans Plantation in Louisiana between 1858 and 1859. The third column's total is the allotment of cloth per enslaved person for a year of clothing and the fourth is the total yards purchased that year.

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