There was a significance in the use of yellow; it is the altar color for certain church festivals, and was proper for the pledging of the child.
All these formalities of christening in the Church of England were not abandoned by the Separatists. New England children were just as carefully christened and dressed for christening as any child in the Church of England. In the reign of James I tiny shirts with little bands or sleeves or cuffs wrought in silk or in coventry-blue thread were added to the gift of spoons from the sponsors. I have one of these little coventry-blue embroidered things with quaint little sleeves; too faded, I regret, to reveal any pattern to the camera.
The christening shirts and mittens given by the sponsors are said to be a relic of the ancient custom of presenting white clothes to the neophytes when converted to Christianity. These “Christening Sets” are preserved in many families.
Of the dress of infants of colonial times we can judge from the articles of clothing which have been preserved till this day. These are of course the better garments worn by babies, not their everyday dress; their simpler attire has not survived, but their christening robes, their finer shirts and petticoats and caps remain.
Mrs. Elizabeth Lux Russell and Daughter.
Linen formed the chilling substructure of their dress, thin linen, low-necked, short-sleeved shirts; and linen remained the underwear of infants until thirty years ago. I do not wonder that these little linen shirts were worn for centuries. They are infinitely daintier than the finest silk or woollen underwear that have succeeded them; they are edged with narrowest thread lace, and hemstitched with tiny rows of stitches or corded with tiny cords, and sometimes embroidered by hand in minute designs. They were worn by all babies from the time of James I, never varying one stitch in shape; but I fear this pretty garment of which our infants were bereft a few years ago will never crowd out the warm, present-day silk wear. This wholly infantile article of childish dress had tiny little revers or collarettes or laps made to turn over outside the robe or slip like a minute bib, and these laps were beautifully oversewn where the corners joined the shirt, to prevent tearing down at this seam. These tiny shirts were the dearest little garments ever made or dreamed of. When a baby had on a fresh, corded slip, low of neck, with short, puffed sleeve, and the tiny hemstitched laps were turned down outside the neck of the slip, and the little sleeves were caught up by fine strings of gold-clasped pink coral, the baby’s dimpled shoulders and round head rose up out of the little shirt-laps like some darling flower.
I have seen an infant’s shirt and a cap embroidered on the laps with the coat-of-arms of the Lux and Johnson families and the motto, “God Bless the Babe;” these delicate garments, the work of fairies, were worn in infancy by the Revolutionary soldier, Governor Johnson of Virginia.
In the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, are the baptismal shirt and mittens of the Pilgrim father, William Bradford, second governor of the Plymouth colony, who was born in 1590. They are shown [here]. All are of firm, close-woven, homespun linen, but the little mittens have been worn at the ends by the active friction of baby hands, and are patched with red and yellow figured “chiney” or calico. A similar colored material frills the sleeves and neck. This may have been part of their ornamentation when first made, but it looks extraneous.