STOCKINGS

THOMAS HALLOWELL came before the Plymouth magistrates in 1638, in trouble for wearing red stockings. His offense was not that he sported overly flamboyant attire: despite the popular concept of drab early New Englanders, no law prevented the wearing of red stockings or any other article of clothing. Rather Hallowell offended by wearing clothing that his neighbors were certain he did not own. Virtually all clothes or the material to make them had to be imported. Given their scarcity—and the notable nature of red stockings—Hallowell’s neighbors recognized his hosiery as an item he had never before worn. No one—not even the men who governed Plymouth—owned an extensive wardrobe. So, when Thomas Hallowell suddenly pulled on red stockings, his neighbors took note. When the grand jury met to list cases of possibly illegal activities that the court justices should consider, they presented Hallowell for his mysterious stockings. When he came before the court, the magistrates learned, probably from the offender himself, that he had indeed stolen his distinctive legwear. He had acquired them on a visit to Boston, where he had snatched them from a windowsill where they had been placed to dry. If Hallowell thought Boston was sufficiently far removed from Plymouth that his theft would never be discovered, he seriously miscalculated the observant nature of his acquaintances. Whatever he had hoped, the Plymouth authorities uncovered his theft and ordered him to take the ill-gotten article back to Boston.¹

Shoes and clothes or the material to make them had to be imported into the plantation. Without a shoemaker, a tanner to process the leather, and herds of cattle to slaughter for hides, shoes came from Europe. Clothing came ready-made or in the form of cloth. Seventeenth-century English people most commonly wore wool (from sheep’s fleece) and linen (from the flax plant). England raised multitudes of sheep and produced a great deal of wool cloth. The multi-stage process began with shearing the sheep, went through various steps preparing the wool, and then turned to the processes of carding (to separate out the fibers), spinning (to form the fibers into yarn), and knitting or weaving. In the absence of sheep, residents purchased yarn or woven cloth. The dye in Hallowell’s stockings—assuming they were a vibrant red—came from the cochineal insect, which was harvested in Spanish America, powdered, and turned into dye used throughout Europe. Linen, from the flax plant, undergoes a multistep process required to transform the harvested stalks into a form that can be spun into thread and woven into cloth. Again, the absence of flax plants or the workers skilled in processing it meant that linen too was imported.

Clothing or the cloth to make it was in perpetually short supply. The investors in Plymouth wrote in 1624—in response to repeated requests for more clothes and more cloth—that they were sending cloth, hose, shoes, and leather.² When a French ship foundered on the shore two years later, Plymouth got a share of what was salvaged from the wreck. The residents were pleased to be able to use the unexpected windfall to pay off debts and “Get some clothing for the people.”³ A year later, when a Dutch merchant in neighboring New Netherland sought to entice Plymouth into a commercial relationship, he brought “cloth of three sorts and colors” as an inducement.⁴ Clearly, although Plymouth lacked ready access to even the most basic articles of attire, it was becoming something of a crossroads, with a French ship and Dutch traders frequenting the neighborhood. Early arrivals urged those who joined them later to come equipped with a “good store of clothes, and bedding.”⁵ Despite such advice, new arrivals often lacked essentials. A large contingent coming from Leiden in 1629 landed without many necessities, and had to be supplied with Kersey (a woolen cloth), linen, and sixty-six pairs of shoes, not to mention hats and other essentials.⁶ Also in 1629, James Sherley, London merchant and supporter of the outpost, enclosed in his letter to William Bradford a pair of stockings that his own wife sent to Alice Bradford, as a “token.”⁷ A token it may have seemed in London, but in Plymouth, new stockings represented a rare and highly desirable item.

This family group walking down the lane of a modern recreation, Plimoth Plantation, is made up of reenactors who interpret Plymouth life for the public. Given the attention to detail at work in this living history museum, their attire offers a good approximation of the clothing that would have been worn in 1627. Although only his are visible, both the man and the woman would have worn stockings.

Given the need, masters who employed servants with long-term indentures faced a legal obligation to supply their servants with clothing. Contracts routinely guaranteed that those in service to a Plymouth master would be clothed adequately during their terms. At the end of their time, masters further promised to supply suits of apparel. Ideally, they left service with at least the basic clothing “competent for a servant,” as Alice Grinder’s contract with Isaac Allerton declared, or “fit for such a servant,” according to William Shetle’s agreement with Thomas Clarke.⁸ Such agreements guaranteed that newly freed servants would not immediately need to find funds to buy clothes and shoes but would enter their new lives clad. Clothes as payment for years of labor might seem stingy to us, but the distance to supplies made these essential items hard to get and the need to acquire them a possible hardship for newly freed servants. In one odd case, the court sentenced Web Adey to be placed in service as a punishment for “disorderly living in idleness & nastiness.” Rather than supply him with clothes, the master who took him on was relieved of that duty when the court ordered that Adey lease or sell his house in order to pay for proper apparel.⁹ Perhaps Adey’s “nastiness” extended to wearing inadequate clothing. In any event the magistrates believed Adey should take some responsibility for covering himself rather than relying entirely on his new master.

Clothing mattered not least because it served as a mark of European identity. To dress as befit a European demonstrated proper civility, which the first migrants believed important for signifying participation in European Christian society. Those who failed in this regard joined Web Adey in nastiness or suggested they had more in common with the Natives than with their fellow English people. When the settlers first arrived and began exploring the Cape Cod region, they dug up a grave. In it, to their surprise, they found a man and a child, the former wrapped in a hemp canvas of the sort used to make a ship’s sails, with light hair still visible on his scalp and wearing “a pair of cloth breeches.”¹⁰ The breeches as much as the blond hair indicated European identity. They wondered how a blond man in European attire came to be so respectfully buried in what appeared to be a Native-style grave. The solution to the mystery of the buried European man, if it was ever discovered, was not recorded. The incident clearly demonstrated, however, that clothes identified a European.

Clothes became a kind of currency. Once they began meeting with local leaders, the first residents of Plymouth Plantation gave them gifts of European clothing. Sending Samoset, a local man who spoke some English, to parlay with others, the Plymouth leaders attired him in “an hat, a pair of stockings and shoes, a shirt, and a piece of cloth to tie about his waist.”¹¹ Perhaps Samoset, so attired, advertised what an alliance with the new arrivals might provide the residents in terms of material goods, or perhaps the unusual apparel simply marked him as their agent.

Native clothing, different as it was, earned repeated comment. Because English writers understood their own attire to be a sign of their social organization and cultural position, Plymouth people read Native attire as a clue about their society too. That the Native peoples did not arrive naked was a mark in their favor, since nudity (or scanty attire) signaled primitive social organization. The settlers would have known that Americans had been depicted as near-naked savages, so the fact that the people they encountered wore clothes spoke well. One description of an important early meeting noted that “On this day came again the Savage, and brought with him five other tall proper men, they had every man a Deer’s skin on him, and the principal of them had a wild Cats skin, or such like on the one arm; they had most of them long hosen up to their groins, close made; and above their groins to their waist another leather, they were altogether like the Irish-trousers.”¹² Embedded in this description was an English desire for furs, to which they hoped to gain access through trade. Hence the clothes worn interested them generally, but the materials drew their attention as prospective traders. Eventually the materials used to make Native clothing—especially pelts—would be shipped to England (there to be turned into more suitably European articles of attire, including hats), and the resulting income from the trade would be used to purchase many things, including English-style clothing.

The description’s odd reference to Irish legwear pointed to another issue attached to clothing; it was seen as a useful indicator of larger cultural issues. At its most basic level, Irish trousers offered a more familiar example for the benefit of readers who tried to envision this first encounter. Unfamiliar with Native clothing, readers might be able to picture an article typically worn by the Irish. At the same time, the reference hinted at a way to judge the larger meaning of Native clothing. Similarity to the Irish also implied that the resident “savages” were not as civilized as the English but rather had more in common with the wild Irish. Wearing clothes at all was promising, but clothes like those of the Irish suggested limits to their achievements.

Given the shortage of European-style clothing in Plymouth, adopting Native attire might have seemed an obvious solution, except that its cultural meaning dissuaded most Plymouth people. When considering whether to employ Edward Ashley as a trader, Bradford noted that they worried because “though he had wit and ability enough to manage the business, yet some of them knew him to be a very profane young man, and he had for some time lived among the Indians as a savage and went naked amongst them and used their manners, in which time he got their languages.” Ashley had not gone literally naked, but had in fact adopted Native attire. This move, along with using their manners and speaking their language, made him a better agent but also the object of some suspicion.¹³

In a relatively short time, it became more difficult to maintain sharp distinctions between Europeans and Americans on the matter of their clothing. Native peoples donned the clothing they received as gifts. An early account describes Massasoit, upon receiving a coat and a chain, “not a little proud to behold himself, and his men also to see their King so bravely attired.”¹⁴ On another occasion, a colonist described the impulse to clothe a Native man—while also evidencing an interest in his usual attire: “we cast a horseman’s coat about him, for he was stark naked, only a leather about his waist, with a fringe about a span long, or a little more.”¹⁵ As the Plymouth planters created trading networks linking their town with Native hunters who brought beaver and otter pelts, woven cloth imported from Europe quickly entered the mix as an object of exchange. Edward Winslow conducted much of the trade for the Plymouth leadership cadre trying to pay off its debt to the investors, and he used cloth as a trade item with some success. When John Winthrop, Jr., later began trading along the Connecticut River, his agent bought cloth “such as master Winslow did buy here to truck with the Natives.”¹⁶ Although the original residents continued to wear deerskin and furs, as they had when the English first arrived, their clothing became intermixed with cloth imported from Europe. The circulation of clothing reached far into the Native interior, as beaver skins came down river and European cloth traveled upstream.

As clothing and shoes came from Europe at great expense, those who resided in Plymouth realized that making clothing locally would increase the supply and relieve some of the financial strain of acquiring it. One settler composed verse bemoaning how the expense of cloth made it out of reach for some consumers.

But now most begin to get a store of sheep,

That with their wool their bodies may be clad;

In time of straits, when things cannot be had;

For merchants keep the price of cloth so high,

As many are not able the same to buy.

And happy would it be for people here,

If they could raise cloth for themselves to wear;

And if they do themselves hereto apply,

They would not be so low, nor some so high.¹⁷

As the verse declared, the cost of cloth was prohibitive for some, affordable only to those of high status. Better, the writer thought, to produce it locally so that all could be attired in proper European-style clothes. Local production would give residents greater access to clothes, although unexpected red stockings would still draw attention for some time.

The idea that clothes made the man—as the old proverb states—was fully endorsed by the people of Plymouth. To them, clothing had practical uses, covering the body to protect it from the elements, but also deep cultural meanings too. Clothes meant not just warmth and modesty; they also marked their wearer’s social station and even, in the context of New England, their particular culture. While New England began to produce clothing and shoes as time passed, and the dearth of apparel that gave away Thomas Hallowell’s act of theft lessened, area residents still sought English-made clothing as a sign of their civility and social status. In the years before the American Revolution, when Americans decided to boycott English goods to show their hostility to British policies, a movement arose to wear only locally made clothes. Patriotic women held ritual spinning bees in public spaces to show their support and wore only the homespun cloth produced locally. This politically inspired move to produce cloth had very different sources than the Plymouth poet’s reasons for supporting local industry, but the symbolic nature of clothing spanned the decades.