Knitting Bee at Whitman Tavern & Store

12:00 - 4:00 p.m.

$5.00 donation per person greatly appreciated. Period refreshments will be served, including birch beer and sweetmeats.

To reach Whitman's Tavern [map], drive past the Macktown Living History education center. Stay right, pass the native area, and the knitting bee will be in the farthest building in the complex of three connected buildings on the right. You can park on the road next to the tavern.

All period and non-period knitters are welcome to attend. That is, you can wear either 1840s clothes or modern clothes. If you don't know how to knit, there will be many experienced knitters that would love to get you started.

In the 1840s, a group of women who got together and did knitting projects was called a knitting bee. It will be a fun day of female fellowship, food, drink and of course, yarn. You can register on Facebook - so Mrs. Whitman can make sure she has enough birch beer and sweetmeats for everybody.

We will be selling all natural yarn from Suzy Beggin Craft. We will have slate gray and heather brown in medium weight and slate gray in fingering weight. Each skein is $9.00. Part of the sales goes to the Macktown Living History site.

We will also be selling freshly roasted coffee, tea, natural yarn and knitting kits, candy, dill pickles, leather goods and period toys, pencils, cockades, candles, and finished historic knit goods. All monies go to the interpreting and upkeep of the site.

The 1846 Whitman Store is one of three original buildings remaining at Macktown Living History, 2221 Freeport Road in Rockton, Illinois, across the river from present-day downtown Rockton.  William Whitman moved to Macktown in 1841 and completed his stone trading post and home five years later.

Macktown (Pecatonic) was founded by Stephen Mack, Jr. about 1835, shortly before Rockton was founded by the Talcotts. Mack was the first non-native settler in Winnebago County, aided by his wife Ho-no-ne-gah. But Hononegah died in 1847, Mack died in 1850 and the bridge connecting the two communities was washed away in 1851, so the remaining residents of Macktown moved to Rockton.

In 1952, when the Mack's historic 1839 home was scheduled to be razed, 700 Rockton residents understandably objected and signed a petition against its destruction. That was the beginning of the Rockton Township Historical Society, and led to what is now called Macktown Living History.