bobbin

The large courtyard was sunlit and humming with busyness, as twelve women sat at large frames making bobbin lace.

Mr. Nassar was born on June 7, 1932, in Providence, R.I. and grew up in Lawrence, Mass. His parents worked at local mills, his father, Henry, as a weaver, and his mother, Helen, as a bobbin setter, according to “The Boston Stranglers,” a 1995 book by Susan Kelly.

The race pitted antislavery Rep. Nathaniel “Bobbin Boy” Banks, a member of the nativist American Party from Massachusetts, against candidates who were open to expanding slavery to new states and territories.

A few days later, antislavery members lined up behind the American Party’s “Bobbin Boy” Banks, who as a boy worked in a textile factory carrying bobbins of thread to the women who operated the looms.

You get to peek over the lacemaker’s shoulder: She is making bobbin lace, one of the most expensive commodities of early modern Europe.