Richmond Type II Jacket Lining

[D F Smith Historic]

As requested, here are a few images of the Diggs jacket. I stated what I feel, now I will leave it up to the experts and their copies of Echoes of Glory to determine what this is or isn’t.
As a side note, the trouser portion of this uniform are almost as cool as the jacket.

All photos and the description there of, remain property of the Museum of the Confederacy Richmond, VA

Hi Rich,

Thank you for posting the pics of the Diggs Jacket, Very interesting on the body construction. It certainly is an odd ball jacket in its construction of the back and side pannels.

It is even stranger that the photo Editors of Echoes of Glory of the Confederacy included this jacket in the section on the Richmond Products.

I do agree with Craig, If one is making a Richmond Jacket, it woild best to have it lined in the most common fabric found in the recognized jackets attributed to Richmond.

....It is intersting to compare this entire thread to Mr. Jensens article in the Company of Military Historians Journal, Vol XLI, No 3 from Fall of 1989.

Where in the section on the Richmond style jackets, he asserts that osnaberg is the most common lining in the jackets. However, he also notes in the same paragraph that one of the mills supplying Richmond also made shirting as well, hinting at its possible use, and that the typology of the jackets ( or any CS jacket) is tenative at best. As none of the 150 jackets and uniforms viewed for the article have any markings in them to attribute them to any one manufaturer or source. Although, Mr. Jensed does lay out a standrard formula to group similar jackets by certain physical attributes to establish a loose "type" or "Style"

Sometimes in the hobby we tend to try to make things too concrete, when in actuality they are more or less still debateable as more reserch if forth coming

Don S

[rbruno]

Re: Richmond Type II Jacket Lining

Sometimes in the hobby we tend to try to make things too concrete, when in actuality they are more or less still debateable as more reserch if forth coming

Wow, this thread has taken a different but interesting change. Don is right. Mr. Jensen's work has been a base line for years, but as we start to see more and more examples, it is hard to fit everything into neat catagories and maybe we shouldn't. No offense to the Federals, but this is what makes CS research interesting to me. It is almost like we need a primer to start conversations like this. No sarcasm here, but what I mean is what exactly does words like "style", "variant", "similarities" mean when discussing CS uniforms. For instance, several officer shell jackets I have looked at that are obviously tailor made and made of very fine materials, but they have six piece bodies, no shoulder straps, two piece sleeves, short collars. Now ,do we say they are a "variant" of a RD III jacket? Again no sarcasim here, just a question on terms. I would say that a coat like that is not a variant, but others might. CS frocks and probably US frocks are based on and very similar to civilian frocks with a stand up collar and no labels. Would we use style or variants to compare to civilian cloths?

I would like to see someone or a group revisit Mr. Jensen's article and add any info that has been compiled to both support that orginal work and broaden it. If there is such a document, I would love to read it.
Rob Bruno
1st MD Cav

[Sweatshop Tailor]

Re: Richmond Type II Jacket Lining

One place to start in all of this would be a systematic trawl through all existing images - although this would take some time. It is certainly something that i have been intending to do for a few years... There will undoubtedly be problems in the attribution of some images, and the inevitable query of 'RD' or 'Commutation' would frequently come to the fore.

Mr. Jensen's article is a classic - a real foundation stone. But, speaking as a professional archaeologist, the material world rarely conforms to our 'typologies'. Since the 1960s archaeological typologies in artisan made items like pottery have been heavily criticized for masking the almost continual variation that exists in material culture. Unless we are talking about factory made, mass production goods we need to be very careful about being overly doctrinaire with typologies. I would suggest that this applies to Civil War uniform items (esp. Southern) as well.