At Left: Wide view of front of loom. Shedding system consists of roller bar hanging from a mid-loom support system, four heddle horses, and four shafts with four treadles. At Right: Detailed view of rocker. Rocker is kept in place by the hole and peg method. There is one peg in the base of the loom, and a corresponding hole in the underside of the rocker. This loom is from Floyd County Virginia. The loom is known to have belonged to the current owner's great-grandmother Mary Ellen Akers Reed, who was born in Floyd County in 1871. It is not known who built the loom, or from which side of the family it came.

The Akers family can be traced back to Blackburne Akers, born in 1736 in Germany. It is not known when he came to Floyd County but his son, Soloman Akers, served in the Montgomery County Militia. The Reed family can be traced back to Andrew Reed, born in 1750 in Philadelphia. He later came to Bedford County Virginia (part of which became Franklin County), and then to Floyd County. There were also several rocker beater looms on the other side of the family. A distant cousin of the current owner recalls his mother, Melissie Weeks Hylton wove on a rocker beater loom when he was a boy. His job after school was to fill the quills for the next day's weaving, so he was very familure with that loom. His mother's sister, Lillie Weeks Reed, also had a rocker beater loom. There was a third Weeks sister, Rosa, who was also a weaver. It is not known who built the Weeks sisters' looms, but their father (Bill Weeks) was a woodworker so it is possible that he built them. Return to Loom Photograph Index