Special Exhibit: Liberty’s Daughters in Northeastern Connecticut: Women, Textiles, and the Nonimportation Movement in the Revolutionary Era. Sat., June 29 through Sun., Oct. 20, 2024. When in the 1760s and 1770s, American colonists decided to protest laws and taxes enacted in Parliament — indeed, to protest the entire notion of Parliamentary supremacy — they put teeth in their protests by boycotting British manufactured goods. The male leaders of this Nonimportation Movement quickly realized that, in order for it to succeed, it needed the energetic support of American women, for it was women who knew how to spin thread and yarn and weave it into cloth. This exhibit examine the contributions of patriot women — called the Daughters of Liberty at the time — to the success of the Nonimportation Movement. It also explores how women’s vital role in the Movement may have — or may not have — transformed women’s political and economic roles in the New Republic following the Revolution, interweaving conclusions reached by mainstream historians with local examples. The exhibit will be staged in the Mill Museum’s main exhibit room, the Bev York Room. There will be demonstrations of how to use preindustrial textile technology and other’s women’s crafts. And on Saturday, August 17, the Museum and friends will reenact a Revolutionary Era spinning bee on Windham Green. The exhibit is part of the national observation of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.