From: Cathi Malke <cathim@cityofpeshtigo.us> Subject: RE: grain sacks made into ???? Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2020 20:04:11 +0000 Message-ID: <8d48620efe8c4b13b0b329a456d0f201@cityofpeshtigo.us>
If anyone makes anything out of grain sacks, please let me know. The City of Peshtigo will be celebrating our 150th anniversary and are looking for items made from the 1800's.
Thank you in advance,
Cathi Malke
Vice President Historical Society
-----Original Message-----
From: localhistory-request@listserve.uwec.edu [mailto:localhistory-request@listserve.uwec.edu] On Behalf Of JoAnn Hallquist
Sent: Friday, December 4, 2020 1:45 PM
To: localhistory@listserve.uwec.edu
Subject: Re: grain sacks made into ????
Having been born in 1933, I remember printed flour sacks and grain sacks and the difference. Printed or plain flour sacks had many uses: for dresses like skirts, diapers, dish towels, pillow covers, sheets, curtains, anything in the textile line. (Early mills often had equipment to produce local flour from local grain but they didn't have printed flour sacks.)
Re grain sacks, you took your grain in sacks (not suitable for textile
uses) to be milled at the local mill, mainly producing milled feed for the farmer's animals. Special sacks, more tightly woven than general grain sacks, were used to carry home the grain that had been cleaned at the mill and was saved for the next planting season. Hopefully, all the weed seed got removed at the mill. The fabric prevented the loss of any of the precious seed grain. These special sacks often had the name of the farmer stenciled in large letters on the sack.
Sorry, I didn't pay close attention to the original email asking for information on grain sacks.
-- JoAnn Hallquist 715-268-6134 715-338-7885