What the words “potto-foo” and “potoso-a-samare” mean I cannot decipher. I have tried to find Dutch words allied in sound but in vain. I believe the samare was a Dutch fashion. We rarely find samares worn in Virginia and Maryland, but the name frequently occurs in the first Dutch inventories in New Netherland and occasionally in the Connecticut valley, where there were a few Dutch settlers; occasionally also in Plymouth, whose first settlers had been for a number of years under Dutch influences in Holland; and rarely in Salem and Boston, whose planters also had felt Dutch influences through the settling in Essex and Suffolk of opulent Flemish and Dutch “clothiers”—cloth-workers. These Dutchmen had married Englishwomen, and their presence in English homes was distinctly shown by the use then and to the present day of Dutch words, Dutch articles of dress, furniture, and food. From these Dutch-settled shires of Essex and Suffolk came John Winthrop and all the so-called Bay Emigration. I am convinced that a samare was a certain garment which I have seen in French, Dutch, and English portraits of the day. It is a tight-fitting jacket or waist or bodice—call it what you will; its skirt or portion below the belt-line is four to eight inches deep, cut up in tabs or oblong flaps, four on each side. These slits are to the belt line. It is, to explain further, a basque, tight-fitting or with the waist laid in plaits, and with the basque skirt cut in eight tabs. These laps or tabs set out rather stiffly and squarely over the full-gathered petticoats of the day. I turn to a Dutch dictionary for a definition of the word “samare,” though my Dutch dictionary being of the date 1735 is too recent a publication to be of much value. In it a samare is defined simply as a woman’s gown. Randle Holme says, rather vaguely, that it is a short jacket for women’s wear with four side-laps, reaching to the knees. In this rich wardrobe of the widow De Lange, twelve petticoats are enumerated and no overdress-jacket or doublet of any kind except those samares. Their price shows that they were not a small garment. One “silk potoso-a-samare with lace” was worth £;3. One “tartanel samare with tucker” was worth £;1 10s. One “black silk crape samare with tucker” was worth £;1 10s., and three “flowered calico” samares were worth £;2 10s. They were evidently of varying weights for summer and winter wear, and were worn over the rich petticoat. The bill of the Salem tailor, William Sweatland (1679), shows that he charged 9s. for making a scarlet petticoat with silver lace; for making a black broadcloth gown 18s.; while “new-makeing a plush somar for Mistress.” (which was making over) was 6s.; “making a somar for your Maide” was 10s., which was the same price he charged for making a gown for the maid.