Interested in Material Culture?

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An Enslaved Sailor in Spotted Swanskin (Pennsylvania Gazette, 3-7-1771)

Sam was "a bright Mulattoe man slave" who ran away from the sloop Tyrall in December of 1770. Stafford Lightburn, Junior, advertised for him in March of the following year on behalf of Charles Yates of Fredericksburg, probably Sam's master.

"He was bred to the plantation and farming business, and sometimes employed as an axe man and sawyer, in shipbuilding, has only been about six months by water, so that he cannot be supposed a compleat sailor."

The advertisement for Sam represents the dehumanization common in depictions of enslaved individuals in this period. For Lightburn and Yates, Sam had been "bred" for manual labor and probably was rented out to the master of the Tyrall. Petty theft had prompted his abscondment from the sloop when he took "some mixed coloured broadcloth" and a "a new spotted rug" (a coarse shag cloth with spots likely used as a bed covering).

Sam's clothing was "such as is worn by seamen; and were imported from England ready made." By the 1770s, English manufacturers were shipping thousands of ready-made garments to America for distribution in the slave economies and among working people. Sailors often wore ready-made "slop" clothing procured onboard ship or from shops along the wharves in major colonial ports. In the 1770s, Sam's ready-made sailor clothes would have included trousers or perhaps a pair of breeches with "petticoat breeches" (a baggy garment worn to protect breeches), a checked shirt, and a short jacket. This jacket was the only garment which Lightburn thought notable enough to describe in detail, as an "underjacket of spotted swanskin, the sleeves of which are much too short for his long arms." Swanskin, in this period, referred to a fleecy cotton or woolen textile akin to flannel. Otherwise, we are led to believe, Sam's attire was indistinguishable from innumerable other seamen in Virginia. He may not have been considered a "compleat sailor," but Sam certainly dressed like one.

Forest Cloth and Forgiveness (Pennsylvania Gazette, 6-10-1795)

William Atlee's 1795 description ends on a cajoling note uncommon in runaway advertisements. Perhaps he had scolded the young Irishman John Boyle too harshly, or he regretted an argument that had preceded the abscondment. Perhaps he hoped a voluntary return would save him the ten dollar reward he had posted, or perhaps the offer was a ploy to trick a valuable servant into coming back. It is also possible that William Atlee genuinely cared for John Boyle, and wanted him to return to the relative safety of Chester, Pennsylvania. In any case, it was uncommon for a master to offer to welcome a runaway back "as kindly as ever" with "all former faults forgiven."

John Boyle's wardrobe was diverse and indicative of both the variety of clothes worn by working men and the ability of newspaper readers to identify materials. He had three shirts, one of a checked material, and "a pretty good hat lined with white linen." Another interesting garment was his "forest cloth coat turned, of a brown and yellow mixed color, lapelled." Forest cloth was a cheap and coarse wool, and in this case was woven of two colors. Boyle's coat had been "turned," a common practice which increased the lifespan of a garment. Turning involved picking apart an existing garment and reassembling it with each piece reversed, so that what had been on the inside was "turned" to the outside. This exposed a less worn and faded surface but, as suggested by this advertisement, left scars which indicated the process. A "lapelled" coat was likely one on which the top front edges folded down (think of a modern sportscoat but with much shorter lapels with no slash). Boyle also had a "brown sailor jacket" (used most often to refer to double-breasted short jackets) with matching trousers. The jacket and trousers may have been made expressly for John from yardage acquired by himself or his master, as he also carried away "a piece of coarse napped cloth, the same as his jacket." Boyle also had a pair of old jean trousers (a coarser twill-woven linen/cotton), another pair of cheap striped ticking (twill linen), a white waistcoat, and a blue surtout coat (a heavier garment).

Clearly Boyle was equipped with a diverse wardrobe. Moreover, William Atlee, like most other runaway advertisers, knew his readers were discerning enough to identify both the materials and the styles of the Boyle's clothing. The subscribers of the Pennsylvania Gazette could, it was presumed, differentiate between jean, forest cloth, and ticking. Among the many lessons we can learn from advertisements like this is the striking visual literacy of people in this period. Clothing was conspicuous, and its consumers were as comfortable identifying material types as many people are today in identifying branded clothing. If modern consumers cannot tell ticking from ticklingburg or shagreen from shaloon, our world of material culture - and our ability to recognize and categorize it at a glance - is no less fascinating or complex.

As always, I have relied on Florence Montgomery's encyclopedic Textiles in America as a reference for period terminology and definitions.

A Dutch-Made Coatee and a Swansdown Waistcoat (Aurora General Advertiser, Philadelphia, 5-22-1804)

Clothing is an incredibly complex part of culture. Often, it is influenced not just by personal choice, but also by ethnicity, economics, and chance, among innumerable other things. When he ran away in May of 1804, John Christian Hintzer was wearing a wardrobe affected by all these factors. Hintzer was a twenty-three-year-old German indentured servant who only rarely spoke. When he did speak, Hintzer's English was broken and lisping. His master, Frederick Woelpper, was a "victuler," something like a grocer and innkeeper of the day. Hintzer was probably put to work at general tasks, perhaps carting hogsheads or firewood, at Woelpper's Vine Street shop. After Hintzer's abscondment, Woelpper turned to the Aurora General Advertiser on May 22nd to offer a sizeable reward for the runaway.

Hintzer wore a blue surtout (a sort of heavier frock coat) which had the interesting feature of a black velvet cape. This material was becoming popular for men's coat cuffs and collars in this period, but by 1804 Hintzer's falling collar ("cape") was becoming unfashionable. His "callico coatee" was likely a lighter cotton jacket with short tails, and Woelpper evidently thought that its being "Dutch made" would make it particularly recognizable. Hintzer probably brought this garment with him on his trans-Atlantic journey, and some aspect of its fit or construction marked it as different from American coatees. Woelpper may not have even been referring to the Netherlands when he said "Dutch," as this term was often used to refer to Germanic cultures (as in "Pennsylvania Dutch").

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Hintzer's two waistcoats were also particularly interesting. One was a striped nankeen, a naturally yellow cotton. The other was swansdown, a type of textile which, according to Florence Montgomery, was developed in the early 19th century and generally connoted a fancy wool or wool-and-cotton fabric. In fact, this runaway advertisement (as well as one from the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1800 for an indentured servant wearing "a broad striped swansdown jacket" in 1800) indicates an earlier usage of the term. Writing in 1931, W.B. Crump noted that swansdown had been "popular for waistcoats for many years, especially with horsy men - grooms, huntsmen and coachmen." John Hintzer was no liveried groomsman, but he still had the good luck or good taste to acquire fine waistcoats. His wardrobe was completed by blue wool trousers, new laced shoes, and a unique felt hat. The style - with a buckled ribbon band - might have been another market of Hintzer's German background or just a personal quirk.

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Frederick Woelpper understood that Hintzer's wardrobe was as important as any physical description of the man's body. The people who read the Aurora may have seen a dozen medium-height, stoop-shouldered, pock-marked men on the streets of Philadelphia. But combining this with a few unique garments made Hintzer almost unmistakable.

The Origin of the Shoelace

Prompted by a recent question about footwear, I decided to do some investigating on the origin of the term "shoelace." Securing footwear with leather thongs and cord dates back thousands if not millions of years. In fact, the earliest leather shoe ever discovered, in an Armenian cave in 2008, dates to 5,500 years ago and features this method of closure. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100609-worlds-oldest-leather-shoe-armenia-science/)

Runaways in early America often wore shoes whose latchets (the straps crossing over the instep) were tied rather than buckled. Leather or cord ties were cheaper and sometimes more secure than metal buckles. Evidence from a number of archaeological sites, including several shipwrecks, indicates that shoe ties were also sometimes employed after the leather latchets had been broken by the metal teeth of a buckle. Before 1800, however, ties were generally referred to as "strings" rather than laces.

Merchants were advertising "shoe lace" as early as 1748 in the Pennsylvania Gazette. However, this term probably refers to the decorative trims used on ladies' shoes. A vendue sale advertisement in the New York Mercury on June 26th, 1768, included among a multitude of goods being auctioned "Women's plain and laces Shoes." In the eighteenth century, lace was a term used for a number of decorative woven materials which we might today refer to as braid, trim, or cord.

"Lace" also began to refer to shoe strings as early as 1801, when a notice for a "Dutch Servant Girl named Maria Leer" wearing "laced boots" appeared in Poulson's Daily American Advertiser of Philadelphia. When John Christian Hintzer ran away from his master, victualer Frederick Woelpper of Philadelphia, on May 19th, 1804, he was wearing "a pair of new laced shoes." A runaway slave named Frank had on "a pair of stout laced shoes" when he ran away from Gerrit Vanderveer of Flatbush, Long Island, on April 6th, 1806 (as advertised in the New York Republican Watch-Tower). Because these were individuals of the lower sort, and they were wearing work shoes, "laced" likely refers to a closure method rather than decorative trim.

It is probably no coincidence that "laced" as a term for thonged shoes became more popular just as the middling sort was adopting this style. By 1800, buckled shoes were rapidly falling from fashion. It is tempting to speculate, but impossible to know, that calling this new fashion "lace" added some bit of respectability to a style previously regarded as a mark of the lower sort.