Laura F. Edwards - Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States

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ISBN 9780197568576

eISBN 9780197568590

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197568576.001.0001

To four people who mattered more than they know

Susan Spencer

John Shedd

Carl Smith

Jacquelyn Hall

To the memory of Jan Reiff

And to Liz Kobesky and the women at Mulberry Silks

I began writing this book before I knew I was writing it. Textiles have always distracted me. Even when researching other topics, I took notes on all matters relating to cloth, clothing, and related accessories, sometimes wondering why and sometimes not noticing at all. They accumulated and ultimately came together in the outlines of this book, one that I never set out to do, but one that found me. It has been a joy to write, because of what textiles reveal about the history of the long nineteenth century: beauty, joy, wisdom, humor, and the creativity and resilience of people who clung to fine filaments of hope at a difficult juncture in our nations past.

This book would not have been possible without the generous financial support of institutions dedicated to the support of the humanities and the social sciences. I began researching this project as an actual book with a grant from John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, which provided me a years leave from teaching. A grant from the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania supported research at a crucial, early stage of the project. I began putting that research together during another years leave, as the Visiting Neukom Fellows Chair in Diversity and Law at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago. After that, fellowships from the Newberry Library in Chicago and the American Council of Learned Societies gave me the time to write. I am grateful to Duke University for providing the support that allowed me to take these fellowships. I owe a particular debt to Kevin Moore, vice dean for faculty affairs, who went out of his way to make sure I could take full advantage of the opportunities offered to me. Thank you, Kevin, for all you do for the faculty at Duke. I am grateful to members of the History Department at Princeton University, who saw the potential of this project and provided a warm welcome as I was finishing it.

This book is the product of years of research in archives all over the country. I could not have done it without the assistance of archivists who went out of their way to guide me through the sources. In particular I wish to thank Jennifer McDaid and Greg Crawford at the Library of Virginia, Kimberly Nusco at the John Carter Brown Library, Sally Reeves at the Office of the Clerk of Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans, Kelly Kerney and Kristen Stewart at the Valentine, Elizabeth Bouvier at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Kimberly Reynolds at the Boston Public Library, Kenneth Cobb at the New York Municipal Archives, Linda Purnell and Elizabeth Dunn at Duke University, and Brianne Barrett at the American Antiquarian Society. I also wish to thank Melissa Murphy at the Baker Library, Harvard Business School, for helping me secure permission to use material from the R. G. Dun & Co. credit report volumes.

Karen Clancy, master weaver, spinner, and dyer at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, spent an entire morning showing me the basics of spinning and weaving. Janea Whitacre, mistress milliner and mantua maker at Williamsburg took out several hours to explain sewing and tailoring in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.