You may never have heard of "fulling" but it wasd an important job in ealy Massachusetts history. Fulling mills cleaned woolen cloth and shrunk it a bit to make it thicker. The first fulling (wool) mill in the colonies was built only 23 years after the pilgrims landed. By having a fulling mill, it freed the community from depending on England for finer fabrics.
The village mill was a very important part of the in the everyday life of the New England family. Before the 1900s, the average New England village had to be largely self-supporting. The basics of life; food, clothing, and shelter, were produced locally. Some of the basic needs required processing before they could be used. Grain needed to be ground, trees needed to sawn, handwoven woolen cloth needed to be fulled. As a result, almost as soon as the first houses were built, small industries sprang up: sawmills, grist mills, and fulling mills. The New England colonies were generally short of manpower, but had many streams and rivers suitable for water power. Because of these conditions, almost every village had at least a sawmill, a gristmill, and a fulling mill. Not only did these small industries provide goods and employment for the communities in which they were located, but also the mill ponds were the village playgrounds providing swimming and fishing holes in summer and ice skating rinks in winter.
Wheat never did well in the New England soil and climate so corn was the staple food. Indian corn and other grains must be broken up before it becomes edible. Pounding corn by hand is very hard work and does not produce a fine cornmeal. Grinding between millstones, however, produces a fine-textured cornmeal and so, almost as soon as New England was colonized, grist mills were constructed in every settlement.
Fulling mills were common in almost every New England village. When handwoven wool cloth is made on a loom, the cloth is not very tight and the wool still contains too much grease and oils. The fulling process involves beating the cloth in a wooden tub with some water and soap. Fulling removes the oils and the beating forms a denser, more compact cloth. In a fulling mill a waterwheel powers a pair of wooden mallets to beat the cloth in the tub, often for days. This process shrinks the cloth to perhaps 1/2 its original size.
The fulled cloth needs to be stretched and dried.This is done on a tentering frame. When the fulled cloth was dried, it is often further processed by having its nap raised and then cut smooth with heavy shears.