United States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
When Salem was settled the Massachusetts 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 cassocks 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 buttons,
1 Flowered Wastecoat,
4 New osenbrig britches,
1 Gray hat with a black ribbon,
1 Gray hat with a blew ribbon,
1 Dousin black buttons,
1 Dousin coloured buttons,
3 Pair gold buttons,
3 Pair silver buttons,
2 Pair Fine blew Stockings,
1 Pair Fine red Stockings,
4 White Handkerchiefs,
2 Speckled Handkerchiefs,
5 Pair Gloves,
1 Stuff Coat with black buttons,
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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