Finger Lakes history · regional story
The harvest that kept Skaneateles’s teasel shops busy in winter
A prickly crop connected Skaneateles fields with woolen cloth. Edmund Norman Leslie’s account follows it from an August harvest into winter trimming and packing shops.
A teasel burr was a tool as well as a crop. In his 1902 Skaneateles history, Edmund Norman Leslie describes its hooks lifting the nap of woven wool. His account follows the work from fields to barns to shops; one market passage explicitly dates his writing to 1899. Skaneateles: History of Its Earliest Settlement and Reminiscences of Later Times.
The harvest came in August of the plant’s second year. Leslie describes men and boys cutting the prickly heads, protecting their hands with gloves, and carrying the crop in baskets. Growers dried it on shelves in buildings opened to the air. Skaneateles: History of Its Earliest Settlement and Reminiscences of Later Times.
Winter brought another round of work. In heated teasel shops, workers trimmed the bases with sheep shears, sorted the burrs and packed them by hand in rows. Leslie describes piecework paid by the thousand. The finished woolen cloth had farm and shop labor behind it. Skaneateles: History of Its Earliest Settlement and Reminiscences of Later Times.
Sources & research notes
Review status: Developing history. Human editorial review is pending.
Written and source-checked with AI assistance under an owner-authorized editorial process. This is not a personal review by Riley or an independent historian. Sources and unresolved questions are listed below; corrections are welcome.
- What the records establish
- Leslie records distinct harvesting, drying, trimming and packing jobs. These details belong to his historical account, not a present-day growing guide.
- What remains uncertain
- We have not inspected workers’ accounts or payrolls. Leslie’s description alone cannot establish typical earnings, national market share or everyone’s experience of the work.
- What we are researching next
- Compare merchant ledgers, farm accounts and dated worker testimony. The original book is preserved privately; its illustrations are not approved for site reuse.
Sources
- Skaneateles: History of Its Earliest Settlement and Reminiscences of Later Times — Edmund Norman Leslie; 1902; teasel passage explicitly says written in 1899. Locator: Chapter XVII, The Teasel Industry of Skaneateles, printed pages 248–250 / PDF pages 284–286, through the end of the teasel section before Water Works Company.. Accessed October 22, 2026.