A leading man of New Amsterdam, a burgomaster, had at the time of his death, near the end of Dutch rule, this plentiful number of substantial garments: a cloth coat with silver buttons, a stuff coat, cloth breeches, a cloth coat with gimp buttons, a black cloth coat, a silk coat, breeches and doublet, a silver cloth breeches and doublet, a velvet waistcoat with silver lace, a buff coat with silk sleeves, three “gross-green” cloaks, several old suits of clothes, linen, hosiery, silver-buckled shoes, an ivory-headed cane, and a hat. One hat may seem very little with so many other garments; but the real beaver hats of those days were so substantial, so well-made, so truly worthy an article of attire, that they could be constantly worn and yet last for years. They were costly; some were worth several pounds apiece.
Gayer masculine garments are told of in other inventories: green silk breeches flowered with silver and gold, silver gauze breeches, yellow fringed gloves, lacquered hats, laced shirts and neck-cloths, and (towards the end of the century, and nearly through the eighteenth century) a vast variety of wigs. For over a hundred years these unnatural abominations, which bore no pretence of resembling the human hair, often in grotesque, clumsy, cumbersome shapes, bearing equally fantastic names, and made of various indifferent and coarse materials, loaded the heads and lightened the pockets of our ancestors. I am glad to note that they were taxed by the government of the province of New York. The barber and wig-maker soon became a very important personage in a community so given over to costly modes of dressing the head. Advertisements in the newspapers show the various kinds of wigs worn in the middle of the eighteenth century. From the “New York Gazette” of May 9, 1737, we learn of a thief’s stealing “one gray Hair Wig, one Horse hair wig not the worse for wearing, one Pale Hair Wig, not worn five times, marked V. S. E., one brown Natural wig, One old wig of goat’s hair put in buckle.” Buckle meant to curl; and derivatively a wig was in buckle when it was rolled on papers for curling. Other advertisements tell of “Perukes, Tets, and Fox-tails after the Genteelest Fashion. Ladies’ Tets and wigs in perfect imitation of their own hair.” Other curious notices are of “Orange Butter” for “Gentlewomen to comb up their hair with.”
This use of orange butter as a pomatum was certainly unique; it was really a Dutch marmalade. I read in my “Closet of Rarities,” dated 1706:—
“The Dutch Way to make Orange-butter. Take new cream two gallons, beat it up to a thicknesse, then add half a pint of orange-flower-water, and as much red wine, and so being become the thicknesse of butter it has both the colour and smell of an orange.”
A very characteristic and eye-catching advertisement was this from the “New York Gazette” of May 21, 1750:—
“This is to acquaint the Public, that there is lately arrived from London the Wonder of the World, an Honest Barber and Peruke Maker, who might have worked for the King, if his Majesty would have employed him: It was not for the want of Money he came here, for he had enough of that at Home, nor for the want of Business, that he advertises hinself, BUT to acquaint the Gentlemen and Ladies, That Such a Person is now in Town, living near Rosemary Lane where Gentlemen and Ladies may be supplied with Goods as follows, viz.: Tyes, Full-Bottoms, Majors, Spencers, Fox-Tails, Ramalies, Tacks, cut and bob Perukes: Also Ladies Tatematongues and Towers after the Manner that is now wore at Court. By their Humble and Obedient Servant,
“John Still.”
With the change from simple Dutch ways of hairdressing came in other details more constrained modes of dressing. With the wig-maker came the stay-maker, whose curious advertisements may be read in scores in the provincial newspapers; and his arbitrary fashions bring us to modern times.
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 poor-house, 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 of 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.