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I have some questions / thoughts about jean cloth used for civilian clothing. I've been studying rural clothing of Missouri farm people, and have come up with a few sources that indicate that wool and wool/linen jean were actually fairly widespread.
For example, in 1863 a U.S. Army surgeon named H. P. Strong of Wisconsin commented on the "endless butternut" he saw when he was in Missouri (in Michael Fellman's Inside War. ) There's also a fascinating illustrated diary kept by a St. Louis soldier named Robert Sweeney. The diary includes an drawing of a pro-southern couple wearing rather old-fashioned clothing, with the caption "A Pair of Butternuts who only want to be left alone." I wish I could post the image, but I only have it in a tif file and am too electronically impaired to know how to change it to a jpeg. His drawing shows a lady in an old-fashioned cap, wearing a dress that looks rather 1840-ish to me, next to a gent with a stern expression on his face. I gather that he's making fun of this couple & hinting that their clothing is outdated.
Lately I've been reading about the German immigrants who came into Missouri in the 1830s (these are not the radical forty-eighters who came later) & brought with them the wool/linen weaving techniques of their homeland, and dyed it with walnut or butternut dyes to imitate their American neighbors.
Finally, I saw a letter by a young man from Iowa , written in 1856 or 57, in which he praised ordinary farm women. He said he'd rather see a hard-working lady "in her simple gown of jane" than a fancy young woman tricked out in the latest fashions.
So what all this says to me: first of all, I'm wondering whether in fact western farm people wore a lot of jean cloth or wool-linen cloth, perhaps more than I had always assumed. Second, I get the sense that these clothes conveyed a sense of being simple, maybe even a little dowdy?
What do you think? Are there other sources you might recommend? Thanks for any light you might be able to shed. Oh, and if anyone knows how to convert a tif to a jpeg, let me know & I'll send you the image for posting.
For example, in 1863 a U.S. Army surgeon named H. P. Strong of Wisconsin commented on the "endless butternut" he saw when he was in Missouri (in Michael Fellman's Inside War. ) There's also a fascinating illustrated diary kept by a St. Louis soldier named Robert Sweeney. The diary includes an drawing of a pro-southern couple wearing rather old-fashioned clothing, with the caption "A Pair of Butternuts who only want to be left alone." I wish I could post the image, but I only have it in a tif file and am too electronically impaired to know how to change it to a jpeg. His drawing shows a lady in an old-fashioned cap, wearing a dress that looks rather 1840-ish to me, next to a gent with a stern expression on his face. I gather that he's making fun of this couple & hinting that their clothing is outdated.
Lately I've been reading about the German immigrants who came into Missouri in the 1830s (these are not the radical forty-eighters who came later) & brought with them the wool/linen weaving techniques of their homeland, and dyed it with walnut or butternut dyes to imitate their American neighbors.
Finally, I saw a letter by a young man from Iowa , written in 1856 or 57, in which he praised ordinary farm women. He said he'd rather see a hard-working lady "in her simple gown of jane" than a fancy young woman tricked out in the latest fashions.
So what all this says to me: first of all, I'm wondering whether in fact western farm people wore a lot of jean cloth or wool-linen cloth, perhaps more than I had always assumed. Second, I get the sense that these clothes conveyed a sense of being simple, maybe even a little dowdy?
What do you think? Are there other sources you might recommend? Thanks for any light you might be able to shed. Oh, and if anyone knows how to convert a tif to a jpeg, let me know & I'll send you the image for posting.
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