You Are What You Wear

It is always good to have success in one's genealogy research. But once names are uncovered, it is also important to study the culture of the community where the ancestor lived. This note covers a rich cultural aspect of people who lived in the Virginia Colony during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Williamsburg, as a part of the Virginia Colony, played an important role in the early years of European settlement. From 1699 to 1780, Williamsburg was the cultural and political capitol of the largest of the American colonies.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation hosts a website providing a wonderful glimpse into this region of Virginia. One area that stands out is their treatment of colonial costume. An informative and well designed site provides the reader with in-depth coverage of the clothing that people wore in the eighteenth century in this area.

The reader can learn and see the various forms of dress that men, women, and children wore. The clothing choices of the people were tied directly to their racial and socioeconomic status. Several articles well describe this dichotomy.

The site provides a solid overview of the millinery business in that community. There is a good discussion of how people dressed for every occasion. Again it speaks to class, race, and status. An interesting component of dressing included coverage on childbed linen.

Childbed linen is a nice name for infants' clothing. There were three items deemed essential by the powers who decided what infants would wear, viz. a cap, robe, and shirt. There were different expectations as to quality and quantity of clothes based on one's status in the community.

If you have ancestors from the Virginia Colony this site might be invaluable to you. For others, it is just a good read about how society judges people by the clothes worn. Gee, I'm glad its not this way in our time!

http://www.history.org/history/clothing/intro/index.cfm

Happy Trails!