Spillman Loom
Springfield Leader & Press, July 16, 1939, page 16A
"A New York X-ray specialist, Dr. Ramsey Spillman of Long Island City, this month will present to the Missouri State Historical Society Museum in the Jefferson Memorial at St. Louis, the hand-wrought loom his grandfather made from native oak in Lawrence County, 85 years ago.
"With his wife and 12-year-old daughter Margaret, Doctor Spillman is now visiting his cousins the Jay Brite family, 820 Benton Avenue.
"Doctor Spillman is the descendant of Ozark pioneers--though he himself was born in Oregon, and reared in the state of Washington and the capital city of Washington, for his father was in the U.S. Agricultural Department. But from childhood he has been a frequent visitor in the Ozarks, has numerous kinsfolk here and around Pierce City, and usually spends his vacations here.
"His grandfather, Nathan Crosby Spilman [sic], came from Kentucky. He had a family of 15 children, of whom nine lived to grow up. They are a long-lived family, and some of them are living yet, up in the 80's. Doctor Spillman remembers as a child, along about 1902-03, when he visited here, the old oaken loom that his granfather made 85 years ago--all joined by hand, with wooden pegs and tenon joints and not a nail in it--was still in use.
"When he came back in 1920, he found the old loom in pieces, lying around a cousin's yard. How come? he asked, in effect. The cousin said he was going to burn it. Doctor spillman got him to give it to him instead and he set it up in his uncle's attic down in Lawrence County. He always figured he would take it back home to Long Island sometime.
"But it is so huge that now he has spent a good part of his vacation setting up and harnessing the loom in the Brite home. He himself has learned to make and has made the harness.
"Mrs. Frances Bogardus, his cousin, and a great-grand-niece of Nathan Crosby Spilman, who made the loom, already has learned to weave in the WPA recreation center here in Smith Park, and she is going to make a few rugs on the old family loom, before it is finally turned over to the Historical Society Museum to be preserved.
For more information about the weaving process see On Weaving by Anni Albers. The loom is still owned by the Missouri History Museum.
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