Girls' Clothing.

In 1759, in the same list mentioned above for his step-son, George Washington ordered from England for his step-daughter—Miss Custis—four years of age, as follows:

"A little girl four years of age, in kid mitts, a mask, a stiffened coat, with pack-thread stays, a tucker, ruffles, bib, apron, necklace, and fan, was indeed a typical example of the fashionable follies of the day."[278]

The school girl in a fashionable boarding-school dressed extravagantly fine. One of the daughters, twelve years of age, of General Huntington of Norwich, Conn., was placed in a boarding-school in Boston. She had twelve silk gowns but her teacher wrote that the girl must have another gown of a "recently imported rich fabric," which was got for her so that she might dress "suitable to her rank and station."

Another Boston school girl, twelve years of age, in 1772, describes her own evening dress thus:

"I was dress'd in my yellow coat, black bib & apron, black feathers on my head, my past comb, & all my past garnet marquesett & jet pins, together with my silver plume—my loket, black mitts & 2 or 3 yards of blue ribbin, (black & blue is high tast) striped tucker and ruffels (not my best) & my silk shoes compleated my dress."[279]

This same school girl, in her diary four months later, tells us of her famous headdress:

"I had my HEDDUS roll on, aunt Storer said it ought to be made less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my head itch, & ach, & burn like anything Mamma. This famous roll is not made wholly of a red Cow Tail, but is a mixture of that, & horsehair (very course) & a little human hair of yellow hue, that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D—— made it (our head) all carded together and twisted up. When it first came home, aunt put it on, & my new cap on it, she then took up her apron & mesur'd me, & from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions, I mesur'd above an inch longer than I did downwards from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than virtue & modesty without the help of fals hair, red Cow tail or D—— (the barber)."[280]

The little girl's complexion had to be protected by a mask of cloth or velvet from the healthy coloring of the sun. "Little Dolly Payne, who afterwards became the wife of President Madison, went to school wearing 'a white linen mask to keep every ray of sunshine from the complexion, a sunbonnet sewed on her head every morning by her careful mother, and long gloves covering the hands and arms.'"[281]

These little girls wore vast hoop-petticoats. They wore high-heeled shoes made of silk, morocco, or light stuff. They wore stays and corsets, and even the poor little boys had to wear them.

"I have seen children's stays, made of heavy strips of board and steel, tightly wrought with heavy buckram or canvas into an iron frame like an instrument of torture. These had been worn by a little girl five years old. Staymakers advertised stays, jumps, gazzets, costrells, and caushets (which were doubtless corsets) for ladies and children, 'to make them appear strait.' And I have been told of tin corsets for little girls, but I have never seen any such abominations. One pair of stays was labelled as having been worn by a boy when five years old. There certainly is a suspicious suggestion in some of these little fellows' portraits of whalebone and buckram."[282]

"From the deacons' records of the Dutch Reformed Church at Albany, we catch occasional hints of the dress of the children of the Dutch colonists. There was no poorhouse, and few poor; but since the church occasionally helped worthy folk who were not rich, we find the deacons in 1665 and 1666 paying for blue linen for schorteldoecykers, or aprons, for Albany kindeken; also for haaken en oogen, or hooks and eyes, for warm under-waists called borsrockyen. They bought linen for luyers, which were neither pinning-blankets nor diapers, but a sort of swaddling clothes, which evidently were worn then by Dutch babies. Voor-schooten, which were white bibs; neerstucken, which were tuckers, also were worn by little children. Some little Hans or Pieter had given to him by the deacons a fine little scarlet aperock, or monkey-jacket; and other children were furnished linen cosynties, or night-caps with capes. Yellow stockings were sold at the same time for children, and a gay little yellow turkey-legged Dutchman in a scarlet monkey-jacket and fat little breeches must have been a jolly sight."[283]