The next annual Knitting History Forum conference is on Saturday 7 February 2026, with presentations on the history of knitting. The conference is hosted online and tickets are available to purchase
Emily Hilliard, Berea College Folklorist, Berea, Kentucky, Unites States will present The multi-stranded history of handknitting in Appalachia
Sources on traditional Appalachian folklife often cite handknitting as a practice commonly done at home from the arrival of the early settlers. But specific details on what the knitting tradition looked like in the mountain south of the US are scant and overshadowed by the region’s well-documented weaving history.
Knitting was likely brought to Appalachia by Ulster Scots who emigrated from Northern Ireland in the mid to late 1700s. In early 18th century Ulster, women commonly knitted and sold wool stockings to supplement their household income and they continued this practice in their new country. The more traceable regional history of small-scale sheep and wool production offers more evidence. According to historian Thomas Clark, the first settlers to Kentucky brought sheep with them. The Merino breed was introduced to the state in 1809, with English breeds such as Leicester, Southdown, and Cotswold arriving by 1820. Scholar Donald Davis reports that by 1830, sheep husbandry was practiced on a large scale in the mountain south. Scots Irish subsistence farmers primarily used their flocks to produce wool for handknitted and woven blankets and garments used in the home.
Over time, Scots Irish settlers’ knitting practices influenced and were influenced by handknitting traditions of other immigrants to the region, including Germans, Highland Scots, Welsh, and Irish. By the early 1800s, the Cherokee had adopted sheep farming and wool production, regularly exhibiting spinning and knitting at their national fairs. Susan Strawn notes that enslaved people in the American South, including Appalachia, knitted for their own families and were forced to knit for their enslavers.
Folklorist Emily Hilliard has researched the cultural history of handknitting in Appalachia through archives and artefacts in the US and Ireland. She has undertaken fieldwork with contemporary knitting practitioners, wool producers, and sheep farmers. Her paper addresses questions about techniques, patterns, styles, products, culture, and the economics of handknitting in Appalachia from the 18th to early 20th centuries. How has cross-cultural exchange shaped this tradition over time? What is the relevance of cultural dialogue, women’s lives and work, and home-based agrarian economies to the history of knitting in Appalachia?
Biography for Emily Hilliard
Emily Hilliard is the Folklorist at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky and the former West Virginia State Folklorist and Founding Director of the West Virginia Folklife Program. Her book, Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia (UNC Press, 2022) was named a finalist for the 2022 Weatherford Award in nonfiction for books “best illuminating the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South.” She is the recipient of a 2025 Center for Craft Research Fund Grant for the project, “The Multi-Stranded History of Hand Knitting in Appalachia.”
Image credit: The dropped stitch (circa 1897) by John H Tarbell, Asheville, NC (image: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division Washington DC, USA)