Category: Men’s Trade

Frock coat, 1780s

Beneath the surface of a deceptively simple silk coat are several linens of different weights carefully placed to provide stiffening, create a smooth fit, and bring a customer’s body closer to the fashionable ideal. 

Tailors sometimes trusted seamstresses with simple stitching, and often fit and cut pieces of simpler garments for customers’ wives to sew at home; but fashionable coats required years of tailoring experience and skill. 

Coat, 1780s, and partial reproduction of its front, 2023.

Silk and linen. Friends of Museum Purchase  2015.23 

Reproduction: patterned and made by Mark Hutter and Mike McCarty. Lent by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation 

Camp life, Army of the Potomac

A soldier sews in the foreground of this view of a Union camp in 1861.

Library of Congress.

LEATHER WORKERS, BOOK BINDERS

Working with leather or heavy sailcloth required strength not credited to women. Larger, heavier needles, sometimes curved, were needed for these heavier materials. 

Saddles and harnesses, saddlebags, pouches, and wallets were some of the leather items requiring sewing. 

Wallet, 1770-1840, Leather and paper, gift of Ermina Elizabeth Newton,  1875

Book, 1790, The Juvenile Tatler, leather and paper, gift of Virginia Louise Byrnes, 62.148

Sail maker’s needle and case, mid-19th century, steel, wood, Friends of the Museum Purchase, 2009.51.1-2

Tailor’s shears and account book pages, 1836-39

Robert Liddel or Little of Bridgewater, New Jersey used these shears as a tailor in the early 19th century. His account book pages record a typical variety of tailor’s tasks and garments including pantaloons and trousers; coats, frock coats, and “jacoats” (jackets); and greatcoats and “sirtutes” (overcoats). Account book page, 1836-1837

2: In addition to coats, pantaloons, trousers, “jacoats” (jackets), and “surtutes” (a surtoutwas an overcoat), Robert Liddel’s accounts charge his neighbors for labor (mending a fence) and for the sale of buckwheat, wheat, and hay. Many tailors in small communities had to supplement their income this way, as there might not be enough work to support themselves solely with their trade.

Shears, DAR Museum, 61.49.1; Account book and photo of miniature portraits originals c. 1810, Americana Collection; gifts of Jean Garvin Knight 

MEN IN GARMENT AND TEXTILE TRADES: TAILORS,  STAYMAKERS, GLOVE MAKERS, SHOEMAKERS

Leather Gloves, 1832, gift of Virginia McClean, 77.8.AB

Ankle boot, 1840-1860, leather and linen, gift of Elizabeth Ann Coleman, 2010.34.5

Stays, 1760-1770, Linen, whalebone, and sheep hide, DAR Museum,  92.257

Boyhood Sewing

George Eisenbrey of Philadelphia stitched two samplers as a boy, one at age 8 and this one a little later. He did not pursue a profession involving sewing, but became a fire fighter, losing his life in a fire at the age of about twenty-three.

Sampler, about 1826-30, silk on linen. Gift of Anna Sophia Eisenbrey 323.2