History
Ashes and dirt were moved around and out of the house using bundled branches and brush for centuries. Native grasses were dried and bundled together, often decoratively woven at the top or tied tightly with yarn or fabric to keep the brooms together. Southerners have used native sweet grass and other grasses for their long stalks with tasseled ends for broom bristle. The course of American broom history was altered in the late eighteenth century, when some say that in 1797 Levi Dickenson, a farmer from Hadley, Massachusetts, used a bundle of tasseled sorghum grass (also called broomcom) to make a broom for his wife. It is likely these early broomcom brooms were simply lashed or woven together, resulting in the fact that they often fell apart. Other experiments