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Shoes reveal the hopes, dreams, and disappointments of the early
Americans who wore them. Honorable Mention of the Historic New
England Book Prize by Historic New England In Treasures Afoot,
Kimberly S. Alexander introduces readers to the history of the
Georgian shoe. Presenting a series of stories that reveal how shoes
were made, sold, and worn during the long eighteenth century,
Alexander traces the fortunes and misfortunes of wearers as their
footwear was altered to accommodate poor health, flagging finances,
and changing styles. She explores the lives and letters of clever
apprentices, skilled cordwainers, wealthy merchants, and elegant
brides, taking readers on a colorful journey from bustling London
streets into ship cargo holds, New England shops, and, ultimately,
to the homes of eager consumers. We trek to the rugged Maine
frontier in the 1740s, where an aspiring lady promenades in her
London-made silk brocade pumps; sail to London in 1765 to listen in
as Benjamin Franklin and John Hose caution Parliament on the
catastrophic effects of British taxes on the shoe trade; move to
Philadelphia in 1775 as John Hancock presides over the Second
Continental Congress while still finding time to order shoes and
stockings for his fiancee's trousseau; and travel to Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, in 1789 to peer in on Sally Brewster Gerrish as she
accompanies President George Washington to a dance wearing a
brocaded silk buckle shoe featuring a cream ground and metallic
threads. Interweaving biography and material culture with
full-color photographs, this fascinating book raises a number of
fresh questions about everyday life in early America: What did
eighteenth-century British Americans value? How did they present
themselves? And how did these fashionable shoes reveal their hopes
and dreams? Examining shoes that have been preserved in local,
regional, and national collections, Treasures Afoot demonstrates
how footwear captures an important moment in American history while
revealing a burgeoning American identity.
As America's first historical society, the Massachusetts Historical
Society has collected family materials since 1791, including
long-cherished pieces of clothing that were acquired alongside
papers such as letters and diaries. Because of the different
storage requirements for textiles and manuscripts, these
survivors-many of them hundreds of years old-have largely been
divorced from their familial ties. Fashioning the New England
Family, an initiative encompassing a fall 2018 exhibition and this
companion volume, reconnects the textiles with the associated
stories carried in the family papers. Generously illustrated with
full-color photographs of garments, fabrics, and accessories,
including exquisite detail shots, the book creates a lasting
overview of the exhibition but also delves into specific topics.
The chapters cover a spam of more than three hundred years, tracing
the history of New England clothing from the colonial seventeenth
century, through the Revolutionary eighteenth century, and into the
national nineteenth. In these pages, readers will find a fragment
of Mayflower passenger Priscilla Mullins Alden's dress; Governor
John Leverett's bloodstained buff coat, which saw battle in the
English Civil War; and the luxurious Spitalfields green silk damask
wedding dress and shoes that Rebecca Tailer Byles wore at her 1747
wedding in Boston. Across these examples and more, the text traces
patterns of global production and local consumption and reuse,
demonstrating how New Englanders used costume to establish their
situation, especially in terms of class and gender, and also to
express their political affiliations. Patriots and
loyalists-Hancocks, Adamses, Dawses, and Olivers-make many
appearances, as they are so well represented in the society's rich
holdings. Manuscripts drawn from the collections-receipts,
daybooks, account books, diaries-further amplify the historical
insights, even at times making it possible to interpret the way in
which a specific garment may have embodied one individual's sense
of identity. Distributed for the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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