Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1894 — Concerning Pins. [ARTICLE]

Concerning Pins.

Harper's Young People. One article of the laws of th 6 ancient pin makers of Paris was that no maker should open more than one shop for the sale of his wares, except on New Year’s eve and New Year’s day, then the court ladies obtained money from their husbands and flocked to the- shops for their yearly supply of-pins, hence the term “pin money,” which, when pins became more easily obtained, ladies spent in“*otlier luxuries, but the term “pin money” is still in use. So long ago as the year 1347 a royal princess had twelve thousand pins delivered from the royal wardrobe for her use, and in* 4400 the Duchesse d’Orleans purchased from Jehan de Breconnier, pin maker of Paris, several thousand long and short pins, besides five hundred pins of English make; thus we find how long aero pins were made and were in use in great quantities, both in England and Prance. So we can well understand how, when this country was young, pins were to the colonists a very essential part of their outfit, and when sending to the mother countries for different articles of household use pins were never omitted from the lists. We find in an old Boston newspaper an advertisement dated May 11, 1761, setting forth that John and Thomas Stevenson had imported, among other commodities, pins and needles.