www.mayflowerhistory.com. Johnson confirmed what we had read in other histories:
The Pilgrims did not have buckles on their clothing, shoes, or hats. Buckles did not come into fashion until the late 1600s — more appropriate for the Salem witchcraft trials time period than the Pilgrims’ time period.
So if Pilgrims didn’t wear buckles, why have we always seen depictions of Pilgrims wearing what turns out to be nonexistent doodads on hats that they never actually wore? Johnson implicates writers:
I am not sure I can pinpoint a specific reason as to why the popular image developed. I would suspect that authors and poets such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, even Arthur Miller [in
The Crucible
], might have contributed to the “popular culture” image of a generic New England Puritan, which then got backward-applied to the early seventeenth-century Separatists — many not consciously realizing that 70 years separated the arrival of the Pilgrims and the more “traditional” Puritan we see portrayed at, say, the Salem witchcraft trials.
It really wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that any serious scholarship into the archaeology, contemporary artwork, contemporary accounts, and analysis of historical records (such as probate estate inventories) of the Pilgrims enlightened us as to what they truly were wearing.
We also heard from Carolyn Freeman Travers, research manager and historian for the Plimoth Plantation, a “living-history museum” in Plymouth, Massachusetts (“Plimoth” was the preferred spelling of William Bradford, the first governor of the colony). The Plimoth Plantation boasts a replica of the
Mayflower,
a re-creation of a Pilgrim village, arts and crafts, and no buckles. She dates the buckle-obsession to the early twentieth century, and thinks artists were the key perpetrators:
The popular image of the Pilgrim developed in America about 1900 to 1920 into the man with the bowl-shaped haircut; tall, dark hat with the prominent square buckle; and large square buckles on his belt and shoes as well. The square buckles on the belt and shoes actually appear very frequently, and seem to mean quaint and “old-timey” — popular depictions of eighteenth-century people have them. Mother Goose, Halloween witches, and leprechauns generally do. The last often have the tall-crowned, narrow-brimmed hat with the buckle as well — it’s the green color of the clothing that sets them apart.
Why turn-of-the-century artists chose the buckle as a hat ornament to mean the Pilgrims/Puritans, I don’t know. Earlier historical paintings of the mid-nineteenth century often had hats with a strap and buckle for Puritan men of the English Civil War. The famous 1878 painting by William Yeames,
And When Did You Last See Your Father?,
has a hat of this style, known as a sugar-loaf from the shape, with a strap and a buckle for the Puritan interrogator. There is also a similar hat in
The Burial of Charles I
(1857) by Charles W. Cope. My guess is that American painters looked to these paintings for inspiration, and went on from there.
Buckles did adorn hats in the late seventeenth century, though. We corresponded with the manager and curator of Plymouth’s Pilgrim Hall Museum, Peggy Baker. Her museum features a cool Pilgrim-era felt hat processed from beaver furs that can be seen at www.pilgrimhall.org/beav_hat.htm. Baker concurred with our experts that buckles weren’t around in the early seventeenth century, but came into vogue later:
Buckles on hats were a genuine style, however — just not for Pilgrims. It was a short-lived style in the later seventeenth century, a fad, if you will. Why would anyone put a buckle on his hat? Who can really understand the vagaries of fashion? Imagine trying to explain logically and rationally to an audience 300 years from now the costumes worn, for instance, by Britney Spears and her imitators?
Who could explain those costumes right now?
Baker agrees that artists
The Pilgrims did not have buckles on their clothing, shoes, or hats. Buckles did not come into fashion until the late 1600s — more appropriate for the Salem witchcraft trials time period than the Pilgrims’ time period.
So if Pilgrims didn’t wear buckles, why have we always seen depictions of Pilgrims wearing what turns out to be nonexistent doodads on hats that they never actually wore? Johnson implicates writers:
I am not sure I can pinpoint a specific reason as to why the popular image developed. I would suspect that authors and poets such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, even Arthur Miller [in
The Crucible
], might have contributed to the “popular culture” image of a generic New England Puritan, which then got backward-applied to the early seventeenth-century Separatists — many not consciously realizing that 70 years separated the arrival of the Pilgrims and the more “traditional” Puritan we see portrayed at, say, the Salem witchcraft trials.
It really wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that any serious scholarship into the archaeology, contemporary artwork, contemporary accounts, and analysis of historical records (such as probate estate inventories) of the Pilgrims enlightened us as to what they truly were wearing.
We also heard from Carolyn Freeman Travers, research manager and historian for the Plimoth Plantation, a “living-history museum” in Plymouth, Massachusetts (“Plimoth” was the preferred spelling of William Bradford, the first governor of the colony). The Plimoth Plantation boasts a replica of the
Mayflower,
a re-creation of a Pilgrim village, arts and crafts, and no buckles. She dates the buckle-obsession to the early twentieth century, and thinks artists were the key perpetrators:
The popular image of the Pilgrim developed in America about 1900 to 1920 into the man with the bowl-shaped haircut; tall, dark hat with the prominent square buckle; and large square buckles on his belt and shoes as well. The square buckles on the belt and shoes actually appear very frequently, and seem to mean quaint and “old-timey” — popular depictions of eighteenth-century people have them. Mother Goose, Halloween witches, and leprechauns generally do. The last often have the tall-crowned, narrow-brimmed hat with the buckle as well — it’s the green color of the clothing that sets them apart.
Why turn-of-the-century artists chose the buckle as a hat ornament to mean the Pilgrims/Puritans, I don’t know. Earlier historical paintings of the mid-nineteenth century often had hats with a strap and buckle for Puritan men of the English Civil War. The famous 1878 painting by William Yeames,
And When Did You Last See Your Father?,
has a hat of this style, known as a sugar-loaf from the shape, with a strap and a buckle for the Puritan interrogator. There is also a similar hat in
The Burial of Charles I
(1857) by Charles W. Cope. My guess is that American painters looked to these paintings for inspiration, and went on from there.
Buckles did adorn hats in the late seventeenth century, though. We corresponded with the manager and curator of Plymouth’s Pilgrim Hall Museum, Peggy Baker. Her museum features a cool Pilgrim-era felt hat processed from beaver furs that can be seen at www.pilgrimhall.org/beav_hat.htm. Baker concurred with our experts that buckles weren’t around in the early seventeenth century, but came into vogue later:
Buckles on hats were a genuine style, however — just not for Pilgrims. It was a short-lived style in the later seventeenth century, a fad, if you will. Why would anyone put a buckle on his hat? Who can really understand the vagaries of fashion? Imagine trying to explain logically and rationally to an audience 300 years from now the costumes worn, for instance, by Britney Spears and her imitators?
Who could explain those costumes right now?
Baker agrees that artists
Similar Books
