This is Amy Wagenaar from the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan history moment. Textile production in America brings to mind cotton farms in the south, New England's textile mills, or midwestern farmers raising sheep for wool. But silk production and silkworms in Michigan? Yes, indeed. In the 1830s, Michigan experienced a silkworm fever. Legend has it that 4500 years ago, a chinese empress discovered how to make silk from the cocoon of a moth caterpillar. The moth larva ate mulberry leaves, spun cocoons, and the thread from the cocoon could be turned into beautiful cloth. Silk production came to America in 1613 when colonists in Jamestown imported silkworms. But they soon found tobacco growing much more lucrative. Silk production came to the Michigan territory in the 1830s. The key to making silk was not the silkworms themselves but the mulberry leaves that they ate. White mulberry trees took five years before saplings grew enough leaves to feed the larva and make silk production profitable. That changed in about 1826, when a french horticulturist discovered the multicollis mulberry. The multicala saplings produced leaves that were eight times larger than the white mulberry and yielded feeding leaves. In their first year of growth, Michigan farmers envisioned quick riches and silk. In 1834, Christian Zook planted mulberry trees on his 160 acre farm in Whitmore Lake. Three years later, Abel Page set out three acres of mulberries in the Grand river valley. And in 1838, Bethel Farrens farm near Ann Arbor produced 40 bushels of silkworm cocoons. The price for multicollis trees jumped to near $4 each. In 1839, disease and harsh winter weather decimated the mulberry trees. Farmers were ruined, and the price of the trees plummeted. A few Michigan silkworm farmers kept trying, but they found that making silk was harder than they had imagined. In 1843, for example, John Dewey, a farmer from Jackson county, reported that he had raised three broods of silkworms. His wife and daughter, assisted by a hired man and girl, made silk from the cocoons. But all their work netted less than $100. As Dewey wrote, his experience fell far short of the calculations of many. By the mid 1840s, Michigan farmers had given up silk making. The multicolis variety of mulberry went extinct, but white mulberry survived and became a common part of the southern Michigan landscape. This Michigan history moment was brought to you by michiganhistorymagazine.org.