Making Washington's Tent, Weeks V and VI: Common Tents and Tent Poles

Over the past two weeks, we've been working on more knapsacks and hunting shirts in the tent shop as well as finishing up our second common tent and beginning two more. We sewed our first common tent with a bell back from a sturdy hemp canvas. This time, we're making some with little or no bell back section (something like this) and using fairly heavy linen canvases. The geometry involved in common tents is pretty simple, but we all had flashbacks to middle school math classes as we figured out hypotenuse lengths, the equivalent to one side of a wedge-shaped common tent.

Michael Ramsey draws a line onto a length of linen canvas in preparation for cutting. The resulting piece will be a door panel or rear section of a common tent.  

Joseph Privott, Tyler Putman, Aaron Walker, and Brendan Menz at work in the tent shop.

Gwendolyn Basala and Aaron Walker sewing knapsacks.

Joseph Privott, Gwendolyn Basala, Michael Ramsey, and Neal Hurst working in the tent shop.

Of course, tents require much more than canvas to stay up. Over in Colonial Williamsburg's joiner's shop, Corky Howlett and his fellow joiners finished making the poles for the Washington sleeping marquee. These include two uprights and a ridge pole, each consisting of two individual poles linked by an iron-bound scarf joint (so they could be broken down into more manageable lengths) and several door poles used to raise the tent roof slightly above the entryways. This made entry more convenient (although a tall man such as 6'2" George Washington still needed to duck slightly) and shed rainwater away from the doors. 

Diagram of the tent poles, via the Joiner's Shop.

Neal Hurst holds several in-progress tent poles end-up to show how the joiners plane down square stock into round poles, via the First Oval Office. 

The tent poles for Washington's sleeping marquee don't survive, but those for his slightly larger dining tent belong to the Museum of the American Revolution. They're made from mahogany, an excellent choice for tent supports, because the wood naturally resists rot and insect damage. We think of mahogany as something of an extravagance, but it wasn't quite as expensive in the 1770s. Anyone interested in the subject should check out Jennifer L. Anderson's recent book, Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America. What really surprised me about the new poles was the color of this particular raw mahogany, much lighter than I expected after years of studying darker finished furniture. But our poles quickly turned a darker reddish-brown, although still lighter than their eventual color, after only a small test treatment of oil, as you can see below.

Neal Hurst and Corky Howlett with the completed tent poles, via the First Oval Office. 

The tent poles in the tent shop, ready for use.

Tyler Putman showing the darker, oiled area on a scarf joint section of one of the tent poles.

We're looking forward to using these poles in our finished tents as the summer continues. You can keep an eye on our project Saturdays through Wednesdays via our live webcam and twenty-four hours a day via facebook! 

Making Washington's Tent, Week IV: Hunting Shirts

In the years before the American Revolution, a strange garment emerged among the market hunters of the frontier backcountry. The "hunting shirt" was uniquely American, cut like a man's shirt but split fully down the front (rather than the typical pullover style of contemporaneous shirts), and typically adorned with a cape and fringe. When war broke out, the Americans adopted the hunting shirt as a cheap and quickly produced uniform. You can read more about hunting shirts in the groundbreaking research of our shop foreman, Neal Hurst, by visiting his academia.edu page.

Aaron Walker modeling one version of an American hunting shirt while sewing another. His hat, a black felt "round hat" with a buckled band and a decorative bucktail, reflects one type of headgear worn by American Revolutionary War soldiers.

Joseph Privott wears another type of hunting shirt, this one made from osnaburg and embroidered on the left breast with "Liberty or Death" (you can read about this interesting adornment in Neal Hurst's recent thesis)

This week in the tent shop, we continued to work on David Uhl-style knapsacks (see last week's post) but also turned our hands to hunting shirts. We know that tailors and soldiers in Williamsburg made plenty of these as uniforms, and we're curious to see how quickly and efficiently we can accomplish such work. Hunting shirt construction is only slightly more complex than that of any other man's shirt. Both employ fabric cut in a series of rectangles and squares, although our hunting shirts also includes a curved cape piece. To guide this sort of linear cutting, we "pull threads," removing a single warp or weft yarn from the material, leaving a faint trail in the fabric and guaranteeing perfect parallel lines and right angles.

Michael Ramsey, Nicole Rudolph, and Gwendolyn Basala at work on knapsacks.

Michael Ramsey sews a hunting shirt while Brendan Menz cuts strips of fringing material.

We're making our hunting shirts from osnaburg, a plain-woven, unbleached linen, just the sort of thing that Williamsburg tailors used for a variety of military goods including knapsacks, haversacks, tents, and hunting shirts. Although we're still figuring things out, it wouldn't surprise me if a good tailor (or even, quite possibly, a typical soldier, issued fabric rather than a finished shirt) could sew a simple hunting shirt in a long work day.

Gwendolyn Basala sews a hunting shirt.

Michael Ramsey sews a hunting shirt.

Working on hunting shirts or any other project, we tailors sit cross-legged, while the two seamstresses of our shop don't do so primarily because of differences in our wardrobes. Most depictions of tailors from the eighteenth century show them sitting cross-legged (still known elsewhere as "tailor style"). It's not hard to find the reasons. It allows you to hold your work in your lap, given that, unlike other artisans, tailors didn't work at a bench or table. Secondly, it allows you to spread your tools around you and in your lap for easy access. Thirdly, and I can vouch for this from personal experience, once you train your body to sit in this fashion, your lower back muscles tighten slightly, allowing you to sit for extended periods without leaning against a chair or fidgeting much. In fact, one theory about the name (sartorius; think sartorial, as in clothes) and nickname (tailor's muscle) for the longest muscle in the human body, in the thigh, has to do with sitting tailor fashion. The practice continued well beyond the 1770s, as you can see in this image of a Wichita, Kansas, shop from around the turn of the last century.

Aaron Walker sits tailor fashion.

Michael Ramsey sits tailor fashion.

Of course, to comfortably sit tailor fashion, we unbutton and unbuckle the knee sections of our breeches, which button there to achieve a tight fit (you can see Michael has undone his in the image above). Thus tailors' stockings, normally held up by the kneebands of their breeches, tended to slip down, providing fodder for satirists in the eighteenth century, like in this 1768 image and this one from about 1794. As we continue work on knapsacks, hunting shirts, and, soon, the rest of our marquee, you can see us sitting tailor fashion, and maybe catch us with our stockings down, on the webcam and follow our progress on facebook.

Making Washington's Tent, Week III: Knapsacks

In 1755, lexicographer Samuel Johnson defined an "artificer" as "an artist; a manufacturer; one by whom any thing is made." (see here). It's a word related to "artifice" that emerged from Latin roots. As early as the sixteenth century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term also referred to skilled military artisans and engineers, the men who felled trees, constructed fortifications, made accoutrements, and repaired equipment for the army. Colonial Williamsburg has a small artificer shop in the back of the Magazine that's worth a visit if you're in town.

Joseph Privott, Nicole Rudolph, and Gwendolyn Basala at work in the Secretary's Office.

Meanwhile, over the in Secretary's Office, the First Oval Office crew has been hard at work on a variety of artificer tasks. We sent several hands down to the Deane wheelwright shop this week to make tent pins, or stakes (more on that in a later post). As we awaited the arrival of linen for the Washington marquee, we put the finishing touches on the ceiling of that tent's inner chamber, including hemming the valances and installing hooks for the chamber's eventual suspension within the larger tent. We also finished our first common tent (check out last week's entry for more on that).

Michael Ramsey and Aaron Walker at work on the inner chamber ceiling.

Aaron Walker and Joseph Privott putting the finishing touches on the common tent.

With so much great linen around the shop, we've been experimenting with knapsack construction this week as well. During the American Revolution, Continental and British soldiers carried their blankets and perhaps a few other small items such as a spare shirt in their knapsack. In the tent shop, we're copying the knapsack of David Uhl, a captain in the Dutchess County (New York) militia during the war. This unique relic belongs to Washington's Headquarters State Historic Site in New York, and you can find a basic diagram on page 30 of Sketchbook 76. It's actually one of only two documented Revolutionary War knapsacks that survive, the other belonging to another New Yorker, Benjamin Warner, now in the collection of Fort Ticonderoga.

The tent crew finishing the inner chamber and common tent.

One of our David Uhl knapsacks (before buttons) and the rolled common tent.

The Uhl knapsack is easy to make and involves only two hems, two seams, two straps, and three buttonholes. It's just the sort of thing that Williamsburg's artificers produced during the war, along with countless cartridge boxes, shoes, uniforms, and tents. Speaking of the latter, here's an image of our completed hemp canvas common tent spread out in the yard.

Aaron Walker and Brendan Menz with the common tent.

One of the things we discovered this week was that your average common tent can actually fit inside your average David Uhl knapsack. Although baggage wagons typically carried soldiers' tentage and often their other camp equipment, it's interesting to speculate on whether any American soldiers ever packed up their canvas in their knapsacks. Over the next few weeks, we'll be setting up our common tent periodically and seeing just how well it does in rain and shine.

Brendan Menz demonstrates the surprising capacity of the Uhl knapsack.

As always, you can keep tabs on our project via facebook and the live webcam (9-5 Saturday-Wednesday).