Colonial Williamsburg: Visit With a Nation Builder Part 1

Patrick Henry

Meet Patrick Henry orator, statesman, first elected (non-royal) governor in Virginia. lawyer, patriot and founder of American independence.

Patrick Henry after his speech comes down to interact with people one-on-one

He had a lot to say about his past. The Interpreter was great. He spoke with enthusiasm and humor, especially for a man nearing the end of his life. (Patrick Henry would die the following year). The Interpreter effectively conveyed Henry’s life story in an interesting manner but the political history was too much information and not enough detail for me until I looked it up. After the presentation, he answered questions knowledgeably and agreeably. Then he stepped down from the stage to meet and greet people wanting to take pictures, shake his hand and discuss his impact on modern day politics.

My pictures didn’t come out so well because I was too far away. I kept moving closer as people left to try to capture his face. The zoom lens can only reach so far, unfortunately.

Colorful character Patrick Henry tells his life story. A self-starter, Henry studied law on his own. He first became famous in 1763 for calling the King a tyrant who would be disposed because the far away King refused to pass a law made by the representatives of the American people. Two years later he spoke out against the Stamp Act in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He compared King George III with dictators like Caeser and Charles I of England. On May 29, 1765, he introduced seven radical resolutions in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Five of the seven resolutions were adopted on May 30, though one was reconsidered the next day (after Henry’s departure) and removed.

Patrick Henry relates his life story

He was a very passionate speaker and got the Burgesses (representatives) all riled up because they thought his words were treason. Henry managed to win the men to his side and led every protest for American rights and independence.

Henry was elected to the First Continental Congress in 1774. On March 23, 1775, he gave his infamous speech arguing the Congress should put together an army to fight against the British. He gave a dramatic speech, holding his wrists together like they were chained. Henry raised his wrists towards the heavens and stated dramatically “Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty” (imagine Henry bursting from his imaginary chains and grabbing an ivory letter opener) “Or give me death!” (picture Henry pretending to stab himself.” No one spoke for a few minutes. History will credit this speech with tipping the scales towards independence. (Listen to his speech given by Richard Schumann who interprets Patrick Henry for Colonial Williamsburg)

The interpreter was really into his speech, he was spitting a bit as his voice rose.

Henry led the militia against Lord Dunmore and called for Lord Dunmore’s removal after the Governor tried to steal the town’s gunpowder. On May 2, Henry collected the militia of Hanover County and marched toward Williamsburg. He sent a message to the governor demanding that the gunpowder be returned to representatives of the colony. Governor Dunmore wrote the Virginians a bill of exchange for value of the powder, then issued a proclamation outlawing “a certain Patrick Henry” for disturbing the peace of the colony.

Patrick Henry answers questions from the audience

Henry served in the Virginia House of Burgesses, was a member of the Virginia committee of Correspondence, a delegate to the Virginia Convention, and a delegate to the Virginia Constitution Ratification Convention. Henry was commissioned as Colonel of the First Virginia regiment on Saturday, August 26, 1775, by the third Virginia Convention. Henry was a delegate to the Continental Congress buy resigned his position to return to Virginia to begin organizing his regiment.

On June 29 was elected the first governor of the Commonwealth under its new constitution, adopted the same day. Patrick Henry served five terms as the first and sixth governor of Virginia.

Henry was succeeded as governor by Thomas Jefferson but the two were not particularly friendly. There was some animosity between them during the war years when the British advanced on the capital of Virginia. In January 1781, British forces under Benedict Arnold, sailed up the James River and captured Richmond, the capital at the time. The government fled to Staunton, minus Governor Jefferson, whose term had expired. Jefferson took refuge at his farm in Bedford County, and because Virginia had not had another election, the Commonwealth had no governor for ten days. Several legislators, including Patrick Henry complained of Jefferson’s actions and called for an inquiry into the conduct of the executive. Patrick Henry explains how he thought Jefferson should have been impeached. (That will NEVER happen again… he adds). The Battle of Yorktown effectively ended the war before an inquiry could be held. The Virginia legislature decided against holding the inquiry and congratulated Jefferson on winning the war. Patrick Henry did not seem to thrilled by this.

Patrick Henry served as governor again from 1784-1786. He was the longest serving governor of Virginia and will always be on the record as such due to term limits.

Patrick Henry tells his life story

Henry explained his feelings towards the Constitution. He opposed ratification because he felt it put too much power in the hands of the federal government without a bill of rights. He feared the absence of a bill of rights was a power grab by a few (as in Jefferson and Madison). Virginia agreed to ratify the Constitution when the Bill of Rights was added but Henry felt they did not adequately safeguard the rights of the people. He emphasized the rights of the people -rights NO ONE can take away from us. Fortunately the audience didn’t get into a political debate while I was busy trying to take notes.

I asked about his first wife, Sarah, who was mentally ill. He explained that after the birth of her 6th child she became disoriented and confused, not speaking and she stopped recognizing her children. Whether this was postpartum depression or not there is no way of knowing given the lack of medical knowledge at the time but modern scholars feel there is a connection. She continued to decline, becoming violent, and the family physician recommended taking her to Williamsburg to the hospital there. After touring the hospital, Patrick Henry decided it was too cruel to allow his wife to be imprisoned there. He had a “commodious establishment” made for her in the basement. It wasn’t the dank, dark, dungeon his enemies would have you think but actually sunny and comfortable. There she had light, food and water, was attended by a nurse and visited by her family. Sadly, Sarah never recovered after died after 4 1/2 years. I had read a novel, in my younger days, Or Give Me Death by Ann Rinaldi. In the novel Sarah Henry throws herself out the window crying “Give me liberty, or give me death!” thus inspiring her husband’s speech. (and my question) However, historians don’t know the truth and this seems to have been a fun piece of fiction for young adults. It seems like the truth is that her family loved her and tried their best to care for her with the limited medical treatment available at that time. It breaks my heart for her and the family who watched her suffer. I asked because I felt it was important to Sarah Henry to have her story told. I realized when I asked that this must be a frequently asked question. A tougher question would have been “Did you cover up your wife’s illness because of your political ambitions?” No doubt there would have been a great answer to that question too.

Patrick Henry shares his story 

Patrick Henry married again after a suitable period of mourning in 1777. His second wife bore him another 11 children and survived. He will die next year in 1799 at his home on Red Hill Plantation in Campbell County. (How he knows this, he didn’t say!)

You too can have the pleasure of an audience with Patrick Henry thanks you YouTubers. I wish I had been close enough to take a video but I got there too late for a good seat.

This is a great program and I recommend visiting with as many nation builders as you can. Thomas Jefferson is still my favorite but Patrick Henry is wonderful too.

 

Colonial Williamsburg: Historic Trades Part 3

Shoemaker

The firm of George Wilson, who moved to Williamsburg from Norfolk, Virginia in the late 1760s. In 1773, George Wilson specialized in “Boots and Shoes for Gentlemen.” Boot making was considered the most sophisticated and prestigious branch of the trade. It followed a centuries-old tradition. The making of boots and shoes for men and the making of shoes for women were separate pursuits.

Shoemaker and apprentice explain the process of making shoes

Men could select shoes from a stock of “sale shoes” in popular-styled, already-sized shoes. Alternately, if his feet were an unusual size, he could order a pair made order, which required a day’s wait. The firm’s specialty was boots for riding. Wilson’s sister-in-law was the proprietor of the shoe factory of Mary Wilson and Company.

Apprentice demonstrating process of working leather into shoes

The chart on the wall shows the prices of goods sold.

The chart on the wall shows the prices of goods sold.

Printing and Binding Office

The printer spent hours just to produce a newspaper or book. Setting type for one page of the weekly newspaper required 25 hours of hand labor.

Printer demonstrating hand press

The type is set in the galleys backwards, locked into the chase and secured. Learn more about the process of printing  Colonial Williamsburg Almanack

In the 18th-century the book binding office served as a stationer’s, a post office, an advertising agency, an office supply shop, a newsstand, and a bookbindery. It sold magazines and books, maps and almanacs,and even sealing wax!

The place to buy your paper goods

Books were sold unbound. Customers liked to choose their own bindings to show off status and wealth or to personal tastes. Here you could have a book bound from start to finish.

tool of the trade

Groups of printed pages or signatures of four, eight, 12, or 16 pages contained two or more pages on each side of a sheet. When folded and cut the signatures presented the text in the proper order for binding.

Bookbinding by hand

Bookbinding by hand

Bookbinding by hand

A bookbinder compiled the signatures and beat them with a heavy hammer to make the sheets lie close. He arranged them on a sewing frame and stitched them together at the back fold with linen thread. As he sewed, he looped the strands around thick hemp cross threads, which created characteristic horizontal ridges across the spine and unified the assembly. were laid on a sewing frame and stitched to cords at the back fold with linen thread. These cords formed horizontal ridges across the spine

The book binder demonstrates sewing a book.

 

Colonial Williamsburg: Historic Trades Part 2

We wandered over to the blacksmith shop to learn how it operated during the time of the Revolutionary War. The blacksmith shop doesn’t really interest me specifically. I have seen two other pre-Industrial blacksmith shops before this one and the process is basically the same.

A blacksmith’s forge consisted of a raised brick hearth outfitted with bellows to feed its soft-coal fire and a hood to carry away the smoke. The forge heated bars of iron yellow-hot. With his journeymen and apprentices, the blacksmith used sledges weighing as much as 12 pounds to hammer the heated bars into various shapes.

Blacksmith shop and Public Armory

They made tools, hardware and weapons

The forge

For more on the blacksmith, visit The Colonial Williamsburg Almanack

Next was a quick visit to the public leather works. The leather works cut, mold, and stitch leather and heavy textiles into a variety of necessary products for Virginia’s fighting men. They sometimes made leather stays, known as jumps, for working women.

 

Saddle making was a skilled craft and produced high-quality leather goods for the wealthy.

My favorite trade, as if you couldn’t tell already, is the Milliner and Mantua Maker. English fashion dominated in Colonial Virginia. Fashion originated in Paris, spread to London and then across the ocean to wealthy women like Lady Dunmore, the governor’s wife. All the other women wanted to copy Lady Dumore’s gowns. Ordering a new gown wasn’t as simple as it sounds, as all clothes were custom made. While George Washington preferred to send his measurements and preferences to his tailor in England, Williamsburg has a Milliner and Mantua Maker’s shop where fashionable women can purchase or have made all they need to look their best.

What d’ye buy? A new custom-made gown? A new fashionable hat?

Millinery shops were almost always owned by women. From fabric sold in the shop, milliners would make items such as: shirts, shifts, aprons, neckerchiefs, caps, cloaks, hoods, hats, muffs, ruffles, trim for gowns.

In addition to being a trades woman who made fashion accessories, the milliner was also a businesswoman who sold a wide range of fashionable imported goods such as the very latest wares in haberdashery, jewelry, hosiery, shoes “and other items too tedious to mention.” [1]

A milliner could trim a hat and ladies could see the latest styles on a pandora or fashion doll sent over from France. Fashions changed every season!

“In a word, they furnish everything to the Ladies that can contribute to set off their Beauty, increase their Vanity, or render them ridiculous.” [2]

The mantua maker was skilled in cutting, fitting, and sewing cloaks, mantles, hats, hoods, caps, gloves, petticoats, hoops, riding costumes, and dresses for masquerades – all in the latest fashion.

The mantua maker explained how to put on stays if you don’t have a ladies’ maid. You can either put them on loosely laced and pull on a knot tied at the top of the cord to tighten or put them on, lace them backwards and shimmy around.

Mantua Maker explains how women got dressed without a maid

We continued the discussion from earlier in the day on what women did when they had their monthlies. Conclusion? It’s fun to visit places like the museum version of Colonial Williamsburg but I would certainly not want to live then.

The shop is much smaller than I remembered. I also remember the tailor sharing this space and now he has his own shop elsewhere in town. Visitors can peer into the back workroom and see what fashions the seamstresses are working on. It’s amazing to look at the exquisite garments they still make by hand here in the shop. While I wouldn’t want to live in the 18th-century, they did have some incredibly beautiful clothes.

Trade shops to be continued ….

Colonial Williamsburg : Historic Trades Part 1

In the afternoon, as the rain tapered off, my friend and I browsed some of the trade shops. I continued my visit the next day when it was too cold and windy to stay outside for too long.

I was especially interested in the spinning, weaving and dyeing house as I do spinning and weaving at the museum where I work. I teach elementary school groups about textile production including showing them how to card and spin a piece of wool on a drop spindle and do simple weaving on a small upright loom. In colonial New England people made their clothes at home out of necessity. In Virginia the situation was quite different as they were a much wealthier colony.

Textiles woven in Colonial Williamsburg

Until just before the Revolutionary War most people imported textiles from Britain. Because of non-importation agreements and war, British textiles became scare. A clothing factory opened outside of Williamsburg in 1776. They mostly made cloth for the military.

Spinning was a domestic chore not much practiced in colonial Virginia, as it was very time-consuming, and most cloth was imported. It would take 12 spinners of wool to keep the weaver busy at the loom, and 100 spinners of cotton to keep him busy.

First the wool, flax or cotton must be prepared. The wool is ready to be carded.

The spinster’s feet press the pedals and are constantly in motion

Dyes came from the natural world. Cochineal, an insect from South America,makes the color red. 70,000 cochineal are needed to make a pound of red dye. Brown comes from walnuts, blue from indigo from South Carolina, Spain, or South America. Purple comes from the Spanish log wood tree, and turmeric from India gives yellow its hue. Orange comes from the root of the madder plant.

Dyed yarn. Red was a color associated with poor people while green was for the wealthy because it required double dyeing in yellow and blue.

Weavers were men who served a 7-year apprenticeship to learn their trade.

Press the pedals underneath, throw the shuttle through, repeat in the other direction

Weavers can create plain or intricate patterns depending on how they set up the loom and the order in which they push the pedals that move the harnesses of the loom in the correct sequences.

He insists it isn’t hard to learn. Weaving is MUCH easier to do when you have a long arm span and long legs to reach the pedals. It’s easy enough to make a simple stripe but to create more complicate patterns requires more knowledge and artistry.

Colonial Williamsburg’s weavers weave on two types of looms that represent the types available to eighteenth-century Virginians. The smaller is a cantilever loom, developed during the eleventh century in Spain. The larger is a four-post box loom, created in England in the sixteenth century.

 

To learn how to weave, Colonial Williamsburg offers weaving workshops.

For more information on the historic trade, visit the Weaver page of Colonial Williamsburg’s website.

Colonial Williamsbug: Brush-Everard House

One of the historic houses open for guided tours is the Brush-Everard House. I toured this recently renovated home on a rainy morning.

The house was built in 1718 by John Brush, a gunsmith and armorer who was the first keeper of Williamsburg’s Magazine. Located on the east side of the Palace Green, John Brush’s home was a fashionable center-passage plan house. Brush planned for future generations to improve upon the house.

Everard House dining room

After Brush died in 1727, the house changed hands many times before it was purchased by Thomas Everard in the mid-1750s. Thomas Everard, an orphan, was educated at an orphans school in London learning bookkeeping and record keeping before his uncle apprenticed Thomas to an important clerk in Williamsburg. After completing a 7 year apprenticeship, Everard held a number of public offices, including clerk of the York County court (from 1745 until his death in 1781), deputy clerk of the General Court, clerk of the Secretary of the Colony’s office, mayor of Williamsburg (he served two one-year terms), and was a member of the Court of Directors of the Public Hospital.

Everard House dining room

By the 1770s Everard was a staunch supporter of American Independence, signing the 1770 Non-Importation agreement and served on the committee to elect Virginia’s delegates to the Continental Congress. By this time Everard was a prominent man in the community. He owned a house and property in Williamsburg, 600 acres of land just outside of town and more than 1,000 acres of land in the western part of Virginia.

Everard House dining room features wallpaper and painted canvas floorcloth

Everard made fashionable updates to the house including adding wallpaper to several of the first floor rooms, putting carpeting into and repainting the parlor and adding wainscoting to the first floor rooms.

Fashionable carpeting in the Everard House parlor

His wife, Diana Robinson had been a member of a prominent local family. When she passed away, her two daughters Francis (“Fanny”) and Martha (“Patsy”) were left to help manage the household for their father.

Everard House parlor with harpsichord for his wife

Original color green paint and mirror help reflect the light

The house is known for the elegant stairway with its elaborately turned balusters, sweeping handrails, and richly ornamented carving on the stair brackets.

Elaborate staircase in the Brush-Everard House

Daughter Francis married the rector of the Bruton Parish Church/President of William & Mary in 1765. They relocated to London when he was appointed Commissary to the Bishop of London (the highest ranking church official in the colony) and member of the Governor’s Council. After her husband’s death in 1772, Francis, in poor health herself, returned to Williamsburg to stay with her father. She stayed at the house until her death in December, 1773.

Francis’s bedroom with rope bed.

Window seat in Francis’s room.

Dressing table in Francis’s room

Martha’s room features a camp bed and canopy

Martha’s room

Thomas Everard’s bedroom showing his wealth. His wallpaper and bedroom set were ordered from England. He requested blue textiles and had to hope they went with the blue of the wallpaper. His bedroom is downstairs, separate from the dining room and parlor.

Thomas Everard’s bedroom showing his wealth and status

Thomas Everard’s office was also in the back of the house across from his bedroom with a separate entrance so he could separate business and pleasure.

No one knows when Everard passed away. The house was sold and again changed hands before the CWF began to restore it using clues hidden inside the house. The grounds have also been restored based on excavations and research.

Colonial Williamsburg: Fashion Fanatics Part 2

The following explanation is grossly oversimplified for those who know nothing of the clothing styles of the period. I was a bit surprised how no one else seemed to know all about the Georgian era! Isn’t anyone else obsessed with Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer and the Poldark Saga?

Getting dressed was quite an ordeal for women. Each day they put on a long linen undershirt known as a shift. Everyone owned several and these were embroidered with the owner’s initials. No one wanted to share their underwear with other family members.

18th-century shift with embroidered initials

Next a lady put on her stockings, tied them with garters and put on shoes. Then over her shift she wore a pair of stays (later known as a corset). This was not for nipping in the waist, at least not for women, it was for posture and to hold in the wobbly bits. This is not the Victorian era and it is acceptable to show off one’s womanly assets (at least in the evening/formal occasions) and one’s arms.

18th century stays. They are lined with whalebone (baleen) and lace up the back. Some laced up the front and others laced up both sides. To put it on requires help and if one doesn’t have a maid, one can simply put the string through loosely,  tie a knot, put the stays on, shimmy into them and pull the string from the top or shimmy into them backwards and turn them around.

Stays extended from mid-bust to just below the waist and created the desirable 18th-century figure of a smooth, inverted cone without separate cups for the breasts.

Working women sometimes wore leather stays, called jumps.

Dresses didn’t have sewn in pockets. Ladies often embroidered or pieced together pockets to wear under their petticoats. Gowns would have slits to reach inside the pocket. Because gowns had separate pockets, this explains the origins of the nursery rhyme “Lucy Locket” (“Lucy Locket lost her pocket; Kitty Fisher found it. Not a penny was there in it,. Only ribbon round it.”)

18th-century stays and pocket in storage at the art museums of Colonial Williamsburg. The pocket is missing the ribbon tie.

18th-century embroidered pocket

Pair of patchwork pockets

Next came a petticoat, possibly one for warmth and one meant to be seen like a skirt. This could be quilted, embroidered, silk, wool, etc.

Green silk quilted petticoat

Over the petticoats came an open gown and in between the empty space in the front a lady would pin or hook an embroidered triangular piece of cloth known as a stomacher. There were several types of gowns worn at this time but the exhibit only shows the open robe style.

 

18th-century white on white embroidered stomacher

18th-century embroidered stomacher

18th-century embroidered stomacher

Very elaborate stomacher

Elaborately embroidered stomacher

Instead of a gown and stomacher, some women wore printed cotton jackets like this one.

Cotton printed ladies’ lace-up jacket

Other visitors wanted to discuss at length what women did when they had their “monthlies.” I’m uninterested in this topic but here is a summary of what was discussed:

• At least one woman wore an extra apron backwards.
• Some women may have worn extra petticoats if they had them.
• It’s possible some women wrapped rags around them like a diaper.
• Alternately, many women married in their late teens or early 20s and were pregnant and nursing for much of the next 20 years so they may not have had their monthlies.

The records just don’t tell us these things, not because they were too genteel and refined (that came later at the end of the Regency era) but because it was just an ordinary thing women dealt with and didn’t think to write down. Do you keep a diary? How often do you write about visits from Aunt Flo and what you do? If you don’t, start now so future generations can know what we did back in the 20th/21st centuries!

A slideshow of quick video clips of different types of fashions popular in Virginia played on a screen next to the exhibit. I tried to get as many different images as I could.

 

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Men often wore an informal robe at home known as a banyan.

Children wore simple, T-shaped dresses known as frocks. Boys and girls both wore these until the boy was old enough to be breeched (dressed in breeches like his father). 

By this period some of the Virginia Indians also liked British printed textiles.

I recommend reading the book What Clothes Reveal : The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America by Linda Baumgarten, Yale University Press, 2012.

A summary from the above book can be found on Colonial Williamsburg’s website.

Colonial Williamsburg Fashion Fanatics: Part 1

My first full day in Williamsburg dawned cool and rainy. I met up with a friend and went to a talk at the art museums called “Fashion Fanatics.” The museum expert guided a group through different exhibits examining what art and textiles can tell us about a time period. The talk ended up in the textile storage room where the group had access to viewing the textiles in some of the storage drawers.

Georgian fashions from Britain popular in 18th-century Williamsburg

 

The time period discussed was mainly c. 1750s. We examined two paintings and learned how paintings are not a true representation of a person. Both paintings of wealthy ladies were painted with an odd perspective with the head and neck not in alignment with the body. This is NOT because the painter painted the body first and added the head later. Sometimes the subjects of paintings wear the same outfit! If a painter had a specific dress he was very very good at painting, he would simply have his subject wearing that dress. The style may not be up-to-date for that time period. Sometimes women wore jewelry and other times not. Paintings are a representation of a person but not a true likeness.

D2018-JBC-0508-0009 2018-165 Portrait of Joyce (or Judith) Armistead Booth (Mrs. Mordecai Booth); Maker: William Dering (active 1734/1735-1755); 1748-1750; Gift to Art Museums of Williamsburg from Julia Miles Brock, Edward Taliaferro Miles, and Georgianna Serpell Miles in Memory of their Mother, Alice Taliaferro Miles

Mrs. Booth (left) has an oddly broad torso, a dress that wasn’t in fashion yet and no one is sure why she is holding a cloth in her hand. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1956-237,A&B Frances Ann Tasker Carter (Mrs. Robert Carter III) (1738-1787)
1755-1758
ATTRIBUTED TO John Wollaston (ca. 1710-ca. 1767) Art Museums of Williamsburg purchase

Mrs. Carter was the wife of a very prominent man, yet she is dressed in a mostly plain gray silk gown with similarly odd sleeves as Mrs. Booth’s dress. She shows her wealth only by the lace at the cuffs and neck of her gown and the little pearl broach. Again, no one is sure why the blue cloth. Shawls were not worn yet in the 1750s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I loved seeing the period outfits on display in the British Textiles exhibit. British textiles were considered the best in the world. People all over the world wanted to wear British textiles. If you could afford to wear silk, you purchased silk cloth woven by silk weavers in Spitalfields in London’s East End. Throwsters, Winders, Weavers, and designers were all needed to make one piece of fabric. By 1774 English silk manufacturers imported £130,000 worth of silk to the American colonies, their most important market.

British imported cottons and silks fashionable in 18th-century Williamsburg

When styles changed women sometimes made over their old gowns into newer styles. This gown on display was originally made in the 1750s and remade in the 1780s! Sixty years later this type of fabric was popular again and the dress refashioned to suit the styles of the day.

Gown, Great Britain, 1745-1750, gown remade ca. 1780 and 1845, silk and linen, museum purchase 1941-2011-1

Gown, Great Britain, 1745-1750, gown remade ca. 1780 and 1845, silk and linen, museum purchase 1941-2011-1

 

 

If you couldn’t afford silk you would likely wear a woolen gown of the same style, like this read and gold one. This one is made from worsted wool, combed wool fibers that were tightly spun and woven. Worsteds were light and suitable for ladies’ gowns. The worsted industry was centered around Norwich, England.

Gown, Great Britain, 1760-1765, Worsted Wool and Linen, Museum Purchase, 1988-223; Quilted petticoat, probably New England, 1755-1776, wool, linen and silk, Museum Purchase 1955-244                             This gown mimics the expensive silk brocades being produced around London but it made from a more functional and cheaper fabric.

Cotton gowns were also very popular. Some cotton printed textiles were imported from India beginning in the 16th-century. Read more about that at Willow & Thatch (the picture of the sign I took came out too blurry to read). By the 18th-century, the region around Manchester, England specialized in spinning, weaving, printing lightweight, colorful, cotton and cotton-linen textiles. Men also wore these types of fabrics for informal wear. These cottons are not only beautiful, they are serviceable and easy to clean.

Gown, Great Britain 1780-1785, Cotton and Linen, Museum Purchase, 1991-450

As demand for cotton printed fabrics grew, silk and wool weavers protested in Parliament until Parliament passed a lawn in 1721 prohibiting the sale, wear and use of cotton printed calicoes. The British government regulated the sale of cotton textiles until 1774 when it passed another act to legalize the printing on all all cotton fabrics.

Women’s shoes featured high heels, ribbons, buckles and were made from silk or wool textiles with covered wooden heels. Men’s shoes were typically made of leather. The components of the shoes: wooden heels, textiles and bindings were exported to American shoemakers. By the late 17th century shoes were fastened by buckles. Strings didn’t become common until the late 19th century.

18th-century shoes on display at the Williamsburg Art Museums

During this time, 1750s, stockings were knit flat on frames and sewn together. This was a much faster process than knitting by hand. In Nottingham in 1719 there were over 9,000 frames in operation. Linen, cotton, wool and silk stockings were exported around the world.

Green embroidered stockings on display at the Williamsburg Art Museums

To be continued…