Home Life in Colonial Days Part 13

To know how the colonists were dressed, we have to learn from the lists of their clothing which they left by will, which lists are still preserved in court records; from the inventories of the garments furnished to each settler who came by contract; from the orders sent back to England for new clothing; from a few crude portraits, and from some articles of ancient clothing which are still preserved.

When Salem was settled the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company furnished clothes to all the men who emigrated and settled that town. Every man had four pairs of shoes, four pairs of stockings, a pair of Norwich garters, four shirts, two suits of doublet and hose of leather lined with oiled skin, a woollen suit lined with leather, four bands, two handkerchiefs, a green cotton waistcoat, a leather belt, a woollen cap, a black hat, two red knit caps, two pairs of gloves, a mandillion or cloak lined with cotton, and an extra pair of breeches. Little boys just as soon as they could walk wore clothes made precisely like their fathers': doublets which were warm double jackets, leather knee-breeches, leather belts, knit caps. The outfit for the Virginia planters was not so liberal, for the company was not so wealthy. It was called a "Particular of Apparell." It had only three bands, three pairs stockings, and three shirts instead of four. The suits were of canvas, frieze, and cloth. The clothing was doubtless lighter, because the climate of Virginia was warmer. There were no gloves, no handkerchiefs, no hat, no red knit caps, no mandillion, no extra pair of breeches. They had "a dozen points," which were simply tapes to hold up the clothing and fasten it together. The clothing of the Piscataquay planters varied but little from the others. They had scarlet waistcoats and ca.s.socks of cloth, not of leather. We are apt to think of the Puritan settlers of New England as sombre in attire, wearing "sad-colored" garments, but green and scarlet waistcoats and scarlet caps certainly afforded a gay touch of color.

A young boy, about ten years old, named John Livingstone, was sent from New York to school in New England at the latter part of the seventeenth century. An "account of his new linen and clothes" has been preserved, and it gives an excellent idea of the clothing of a son of wealthy people at that time. It reads thus, in the old spelling:--

"Eleven new shirts, 4 pair laced sleves, 8 Plane Cravats, 4 Cravats with Lace, 4 Stripte Wastecoats with black b.u.t.tons, 1 Flowered Wastecoat, 4 New osenbrig britches, 1 Gray hat with a black ribbon, 1 Gray hat with a blew ribbon, 1 Dousin black b.u.t.tons, 1 Dousin coloured b.u.t.tons, 3 Pair gold b.u.t.tons, 3 Pair silver b.u.t.tons, 2 Pair Fine blew Stockings, 1 Pair Fine red Stockings, 4 White Handkerchiefs, 2 Speckled Handkerchiefs, 5 Pair Gloves, 1 Stuff Coat with black b.u.t.tons, 1 Cloth Coat, 1 Pair blew plush britches, 1 Pair Serge britches, 2 Combs, 1 Pair new Shooes, Silk & Thred to mend his Cloathes."

Osenbrig was a heavy, strong linen. This would seem to be a summer outfit, and scarcely warm enough for New England winters. Other schoolboys at that date had deerskin breeches.

Leather was much used, especially in the form of tanned buckskin breeches and the deerskin hunters' jackets, which have always and deservedly been a favorite wear, since they are one of the most appropriate, useful, comfortable, and picturesque garments ever worn by men in any active outdoor life.

Soon in the larger cities and among wealthy folk a much more elaborate and varied style of dress became fashionable. The dress of little girls in families of wealth was certainly almost as formal and elegant as the dress of their mammas, and it was a very hampering and stiff dress. They wore vast hoop-petticoats, heavy stays, and high-heeled shoes. Their complexions were objects of special care; they wore masks of cloth or velvet to protect them from the tanning rays of the sun, and long-armed gloves. Little Dolly Payne, who afterwards became the wife of President Madison, went to school wearing "a white linen mask to keep every ray of sunshine from the complexion, a sunbonnet sewed on her head every morning by her careful mother, and long gloves covering the hands and arms." Our present love of outdoor life, of athletic sports, and our indifference to being sunburned, makes such painstaking vanity seem most unbearably tiresome.

In 1737 Colonel John Lewis sent from Virginia to England for a wardrobe for a young miss, a school-girl, who was his ward. The list reads thus:--

"A cap ruffle and tucker, the lace 5 shillings per Yard, 1 pair White Stays, 8 pair White Kid gloves, 2 pair coloured kid gloves, 2 pair worsted hose, 3 pair thread hose, 1 pair silk shoes laced, 1 pair morocco shoes, 1 Hoop Coat, 1 Hat, 4 pair plain Spanish shoes, 2 pair calf shoes, 1 mask, 1 fan, 1 necklace, 1 Girdle and buckle, 1 piece fashionable Calico, 4 yards ribbon for knots, 1 yard Cambric, A mantua and coat of lute-string."

In the middle of the century George Washington also sent to England for an outfit for his stepdaughter, Miss Custis. She was four years old, and he ordered for her, pack-thread stays, stiff coats of silk, masks, caps, bonnets, bibs, ruffles, necklaces, fans, silk and calamanco shoes, and leather pumps. There were also eight pairs of kid mitts and four pairs of gloves; these with the masks show that this little girl's complexion was also to be well guarded.

A little New England Miss Huntington, when twelve years old, was sent from Norwich, Connecticut, to be "finished" in a Boston boarding-school.

She had twelve silk gowns, but her teacher wrote home that she must have another gown of "a recently imported rich fabric," which was at once bought for her because it was "suitable for her rank and station."

Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a constant succession of rich and gay fashions; for American dress was carefully modelled upon European, especially English modes. Men's wear was as rich as women's. An English traveller said that Boston women and men in 1740 dressed as gay every day as courtiers in England at a coronation. But with all the richness there was no wastefulness. The sister of the rich Boston merchant, Peter Faneuil, who built Faneuil Hall, sent her gowns to London to be turned and dyed, and her old ribbons and gowns to be sold. But her gowns, which are still preserved, are of magnificent stuffs.

New Yorkers were dressed in gauzes, silks, and laces; even women Quakers in Pennsylvania had to be warned against wearing hoop-petticoats, scarlet shoes, and puffed and rolled hair.

The family of so frugal a man as Benjamin Franklin did not escape a slight infection of the prevailing love for gay dress. In the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ this advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared in 1750:--

"Whereas on Sat.u.r.day night last the house of Benjamin Franklin of this city, Printer, was broken open, and the following things feloniously taken away, viz., a double necklace of gold beads, a womans long scarlet cloak almost new, with a double cape, a womans gown, of printed cotton of the sort called brocade print, very remarkable, the ground dark, with large red roses, and other large and yellow flowers, with blue in some of the flowers, with many green leaves; a pair of womens stays covered with white tabby before, and dove colour'd tabby behind, with two large steel hooks and sundry other goods, etc."

Southern dames, especially of Annapolis, Baltimore, and Charleston, were said to have the richest brocades and damasks that could be bought in London. Every sailing-vessel that came from Europe brought boxes of splendid clothing. The heroes of the Revolution had a high regard for dress. The patriot, John Hanc.o.c.k, was seen at noonday wearing a scarlet velvet cap, a blue damask gown lined with velvet, white satin embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, white silk stockings, and red morocco slippers. George Washington was most precise in his orders for his clothing, and wore the richest silk and velvet suits.

A true description of a Boston printer just after the Revolution shows his style of dress:--

"He wore a pea-green coat, white vest, nankeen small clothes, white silk stockings, and pumps fastened with silver buckles which covered at least half the foot from instep to toe. His small clothes were tied at the knees with ribbon of the same colour in double bows, the ends reaching down to the ancles. His hair in front was well loaded with pomatum, frizzled or c.r.a.ped and powdered. Behind, his natural hair was augmented by the addition of a large queue called vulgarly a false tail, which, enrolled in some yards of black ribbon, hung half-way down his back."

Many letters still exist written by prominent citizens of colonial times ordering clothing, chiefly from Europe. Rich laces, silk materials, velvet, and fine cloth of light and gay colors abound. Frequently they ordered nightgowns of silk and damask. These nightgowns were not a garment worn at night, but a sort of dressing-gown. Harvard students were in 1754 forbidden to wear them. Under the name of banyan they became very fashionable, and men had their portraits painted in them, for instance the portrait of Nicholas Boylston, now in Harvard Memorial Hall.

With the increase of trade with China many Chinese and East Indian goods became fashionable, with hundreds of different names. A few were of silk or linen, but far more of cotton; among them nankeens were the most imported and even for winter wear.

Both men and women wore for many years great cloaks or capes, known by various names, such as roquelaures, capuchins, pelisses, etc. Women's shoes were of very thin materials, and paper-soled. They wore to protect these frail shoes, when walking on the ill-paved streets, various forms of overshoes, known as goloe-shoes, clogs, pattens, etc. When riding, women in the colonies wore, as did Queen Elizabeth, a safeguard, a long over-petticoat to protect the gown from mud and rain. This was sometimes called a foot-mantle, also a weather-skirt. A traveller tells of seeing a row of horses tied to a fence outside a Quaker meeting. Some carried side saddles, some men's saddles and pillions. On the fence hung the muddy safeguards the Quaker dames had worn outside their drab petticoats. Men wore sherry-vallies or spatter-dashes to protect their gay breeches.

There was one fashion which lasted for a century and a half which was so untidy, so uncomfortable, so costly, and so ridiculous that we can only wonder that it was endured for a single season--I mean the fashion of wig-wearing by men. The first colonists wore their own natural hair. The Cavaliers had long and perfumed love-locks; and though the Puritans had been called Roundheads, their hair waved, also, over the band or collar, and often hung over the shoulder. The Quakers, also, wore long locks, as the lovely portrait of William Penn shows. But by 1675 wigs had become common enough to be denounced by the Ma.s.sachusetts government, and to be preached against by many ministers; while other ministers proudly wore them. Wigs were called horrid bushes of vanity, and hundreds of other disparaging names, which seemed to make them more popular. They varied from year to year; sometimes they swelled out at the sides, or rose in great puffs, or turned under in heavy rolls, or hung in braids and curls and pig-tails; they were made of human hair, of horsehair, goat's-hair, calves' and cows' tails, of thread, silk, and mohair. They had scores of silly and meaningless names, such as "grave full-bottom," "giddy feather-top," "long-tail," "fox-tail," "drop-wig," etc. They were bound and braided with pink, green, red, and purple ribbons, sometimes all these colors on one wig. They were very heavy, and very hot, and very expensive, often costing what would be equal to a hundred dollars to-day. The care of them was a great item, often ten pounds a year for a single wig, and some gentlemen owned eight or ten wigs. Little children wore them. I have seen the bill for a wig for William Freeman, dated 1754; he was a child seven years old. His father paid nine pounds for it, and the same for wigs for his other boys of nine and ten. Even servants wore them; I read in the _Ma.s.sachusetts Gazette_ of a runaway negro slave who "wore off a curl of hair tied around his head with a string to imitate a wig," which must have been a comical sight. After wigs had become unfashionable, the natural hair was powdered, and was tied in a queue in the back. This was an untidy, troublesome fashion, which ruined the clothes; for the hair was soaked with oil or pomatum to make the powder stick.

Comparatively little jewellery was worn. A few men had gold or silver sleeve-b.u.t.tons; a few women had bracelets or lockets; nearly all of any social standing had rings, which were chiefly mourning-rings. As these gloomy ornaments were given to all the chief mourners at funerals, it can be seen that a man of large family connections, or of prominent social standing, might acquire a great many of them. The minister and doctor usually had a ring at every funeral they attended. It is told of an old Salem doctor, who died in 1758, that he had a tankard full of mourning-rings which he had secured at funerals. Men sometimes wore thumb-rings, which seems no queerer than the fact that they carried m.u.f.fs. Old Dr. Prince of Boston carried an enormous bearskin m.u.f.f.

Gloves also were gifts at funerals, sometimes in large numbers. At the funeral of the wife of Governor Belcher, in 1738, over a thousand pairs were given away. Rev. Andrew Eliot, who was pastor of the North Church in Boston, had twenty-nine hundred pair of gloves given him in thirty-two years; many of these he sold. In all the colonies, whether settled by Dutch, English, French, German, or Swedes, gloves were universally given at funerals.

The early watches were clumsy affairs, often globose in shape, with a detached outer case.

To show how few of the first colonists owned either watches or clocks, we have the contemporary evidence of Roger Williams. When he rowed thirty miles down the bay, and disputed with the "Foxians" at Newport in 1672, it was agreed that each party should be heard in turn for a quarter of an hour. But no clock was available in Newport; and among the whole population that flocked to the debate, there was not a single watch. Williams says, "unless we had Clocks and Watches and Quarter Gla.s.ses (as in some Ships) it was impossible to be exactly punctual," so they guessed at the time.

Sun-dials were often set in the street in front of houses; and noon-marks on the threshold of the front door or window-sill helped to show the hour of the day.

CHAPTER XIII

JACK-KNIFE INDUSTRIES

Chepa Rose was one of those old-time chap-men known throughout New England as "trunk pedlers." Bearing on his back by means of a harness of stout hempen webbing two oblong trunks of thin metal,--probably tin,--for forty-eight years he had appeared at every considerable farmhouse throughout Narragansett and eastern Connecticut, at intervals as regular as the action and appearance of the sun, moon, and tides; and everywhere was he greeted with an eager welcome.

Chepa was, as he said, "half Injun, half French, and half Yankee." From his Indian half he had his love of tramping which made him choose the wandering trade of trunk pedler; his French half made him a good trader and talker; while his Yankee half endowed him with a universal Yankee trait, a "handiness," which showed in scores of gifts and accomplishments and knacks that made him as warmly greeted everywhere as were his attractive trunks.

He was a famous medicine-brewer; from the roots and herbs and barks that he gathered as he tramped along the country roads he manufactured a cough medicine that was twice as effective and twice as bitter as old Dr. Greene's; he made famous plasters, of two kinds,--plasters to stick and plasters to crawl, the latter to follow the course of the disease or pain; he concocted wonderful ink; he showed Jenny Greene how to bleach her new straw bonnet with sulphur fumes; he mended umbrellas, harnesses, and tinware; he made glorious teetotums which the children looked for as eagerly and unfailingly as they did for his tops and marbles, his ribbons and Gibraltars.

One day he came through the woods to John Helme's house carrying in his hand a stout birchen staff or small tree-trunk, which he laid down on the flat millstone imbedded in the gra.s.s at the back door, while he displayed and sold his wares and had his dinner. He then went out to the dooryard with little Johnny Helme, sat down on the millstone, lighted his pipe, opened his jack-knife, and discoursed thus:--

"Johnny, I'm going to tell you how to make an Injun broom. Fust, you must find a big birch-tree. There ain't so many big ones now of any kind as there useter be when we made canoes and plates and cradles, and water spouts, and troughs, and furnitoor out of the bark. But you must get a yallow birch-tree as straight as H and edzactly five inch acrost. Now, how kin ye tell how fur it is acrost a tree afore ye cut it off? I kin tell by the light of my eye, but that's Injun larnin'. Lemme tell you by book-larnin'.

Measure it round, and make the string in three parts, and one part'll be what it is acrost. If it's nine inch round, it'll be three inch acrost, and so on. Now don't you forgit that. Wal! you must get a straight birch-tree five inch acrost where you cut it off, just like this one. Then make the stick six foot long. Then one foot and two inch from the big end cut a ring round the bark; wal! say two inch wide just like this. Then you take off all the bark below that ring. Then you begin a-slivering with a sharp jack-knife, leetle teeny flat slivers way up to the bark ring. When it's all slivered up thin and flat there'll be a leetle hard core left inside at the top, and you must cut it out careful. Then you take off the bark above the ring and begin slivering down. Leave a stick just big enough for a handle. Then tie this last lot of slivers down tight over the others with a hard-twisted tow string, and trim 'em off even. Then whittle off and sc.r.a.pe off a good smooth handle with a hole in the top to put a loop of cowhide in, to hang it up by orderly.

"Yes, Johnny, I've got just enough Injun in me to make a good broom; not enough to be ashamed of and not enough to be proud of.

But you mustn't forgit this; a moccasin's the best cover a man ever had on his feet in the woods; the easiest to get stuff for, the easiest to make, the easiest to wear. And a birch-bark canoe's the best boat a man can have on the river. It's the easiest to get stuff for, easiest to carry, the fastest to paddle. And a snowshoe's the best help a man can have in the winter. It's the easiest to get stuff for, the easiest to walk on, the easiest to carry. And just so a birch broom is the best broom a man or at any rate a woman can have; four best things and all of 'em is Injun.

Now you just slip in and take that broom to Phillis. I see her the last time I was here a-using a mizrable store broom to clean her oven--and just ask her if I can't have a mug of apple-jack afore I go to bed."

If this scene had been laid in New Hampshire or Vermont instead of Narragansett, the Indian broom would have been no novelty to any boy or house-servant. For in the northern New England states, heavily wooded with yellow birch, every boy knew how to make the Indian brooms, and every household in country or town had them. There was a constant demand in Boston for them, and sometimes country stores had several hundred of the brooms at a time. Throughout Vermont seventy years ago the uniform price paid for making one of these brooms was six cents; and if the splints were very fine and the handle sc.r.a.ped with gla.s.s, it took nearly three evenings to finish it. Indian squaws peddled them throughout the country for ninepence apiece. Major Robert Randolph told in fashionable London circles about the year 1750, that when he was a boy in New Hampshire he earned his only spending-money by making these brooms and carrying them on his back ten miles to town to sell them.

Girls could whittle as well as boys, and often exchanged the birch brooms they made for a bit of ribbon or lace.

A simpler and less durable broom was made of hemlock branches. A local rhyme says of them:--

"Driving at twilight the waiting cows, With arms full-laden with hemlock boughs, To be traced on a broom ere the coming day From its eastern chambers should dance away."

The hemlock broom was simply a bunch of close-growing, full-foliaged hemlock branches tied tightly together and wound around with hempen twine, "traced," the rhyme says, with a sharply pointed handle, which the boys had shaped and whittled, driven well into the bound portion.

This making of brooms for domestic use is but an example of one of the many score of useful domestic and farm articles which were furnished by the natural resources of every wood-lot, adapted by the Yankee jack-knife and a few equally simple tools, of which the gimlet might take the second place.

It was so emphatically a wooden age in colonial days that it seemed almost that there were no hard metals used for any articles which to-day seem so necessarily of metal. Ploughs were of wood, and harrows; cart-wheels were often wholly of wood without tires, though sometimes iron plates called strakes held the felloes together, being fastened to them by long clinch-pins. The dish-turner and cooper were artisans of importance in those days; piggins, noggins, runlets, keelers, firkins, buckets, churns, dye-tubs, cowles, powdering-tubs, were made with chary or no use of metal.

The forests were the wealth of the colonies in more ways than one; and it may be said that they furnished both domestic winter employment and toys for the boys. The New England forests were full of richly varied kinds of wood, suitable for varied uses, with varied qualities--pliability, stiffness, durability, weight, strength; and it is surprising to see how quickly the woods were a.s.signed to fixed uses, even for toys; in every state pop-guns were made from elder; bows and arrows of hemlock; whistles of chestnut or willow.

The Rev. John Pierpont wrote thus of the whittling of his childhood days:--

"The Yankee boy before he's sent to school Well knows the mysteries of that magic tool-- The pocket-knife. To that his wistful eye Turns, while he hears his mother's lullaby.

And in the education of the lad, No little part that implement hath had.

His pocket-knife to the young whittler brings A growing knowledge of material things, Projectiles, music, and the sculptor's art.

His chestnut whistle, and his shingle dart, His elder pop-gun with its hickory rod, Its sharp explosion and rebounding wad, His corn-stalk fiddle, and the deeper tone That murmurs from his pumpkin-leaf trombone Conspire to teach the boy. To these succeed His bow, his arrow of a feathered reed, His windmill raised the pa.s.sing breeze to win, His water-wheel that turns upon a pin.

Thus by his genius and his jack-knife driven Ere long he'll solve you any problem given; Make you a locomotive or a clock, Cut a ca.n.a.l or build a floating dock: Make anything in short for sea or sh.o.r.e, From a child's rattle to a seventy-four.