Men’s Clothing
Worn in the
United States “Mineral District.”

On page 20 of his 1973 Black Hawk War history That Disgraceful Affair: the Black Hawk War,Dr. Cecil Eby offered the following observation regarding clothing worn by male pioneers on the Illinois and western Michigan Territory frontier:

The volunteers of 1832, two-thirds of whom were of Southern extraction, came from frontier stock, but were not themselves frontiersmen. Their clothes had been cut from bolts of store-bought goods, not the skins of animals....

On the surface, there appears to be some basis for Dr. Eby’s theory. In 1829, after an extended trip to America, Englishman Basil Hall wrote Forty Etchings From Sketches Made With a Camera Lucide in North America. He desribed the garb of some of the "frontiersmen" he saw: It is notable that the backwoodsmen here have beaver hats of the style worn in more civilized areas but in a dilapidated condition [. There was] nothing characteristic about their costume-wear, a medley—a bad imitation of all fashion in English Towns—Winter dress not ill chosen though perfectly novel to strangers—greatcoats made of common woollen [sic] horse cloths, white or green, made with gay stripes on collar, cuffs, and pockets—some striped all over like zebras. Likewise, A. T Andreas in his History of Chicago, pp. 242, 266 indicated that the garb of the frontiersmen were a mix of fur felt hats, broadcloth trousers of "Kentucky" jean, and moccasins. Beyond blanket coats (or "capotes") and trousers of Kentucky jean cloth, what other evidence exists of the clothing of lead miners, drovers, laborers, and farmersin the region?

Many of the young men that emigrated to the lead region originated in Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois. These adventurers brought with them traditions and memories from childhood in those locales. While not himself a lead miner, Elijah Iles preserved a typical example of such recollections from his childhood in Kentucky, circa 1800-1816: My mother, with her wool cards, spinning wheel, and loom, manufactured all the clothing worn by herself and the family, except the buckskin pants worn by the men and boys. All these were made into garments with thread spun by herself. No other kind of apparel was used at that day. (1)

In 1826, the first major strike of lead in the Northwest frontier brought a flood of potential miners and fortune seekers to what became known as the "Mineral District" of northern Illinois and western Michigan Territory (present-day Wisconsin.) The new arrivals established mines, known as "diggings," and smelters for processing the "galena" for lead ore. Galena, Illinois emerged as the unofficial capitol of the Mineral District and the center of society in the region. Mrs. Adele de Perdreauville Gratiot, wife of John Pierre Bugnion Gratiot described in great detail, an 1826 Independence Day celebration in Galena:

The first insight I had in the border society was the Fourth of July celebration... It was to occur at the old Harris place, below the portage, three miles from town. The crowd was the curious medley that could be imagined—only a fanciful pen could describe the scene. Several very polished persons were present; but it was the contrast that made it original—Capt. Comstock, Maj. Farnsworth, Dr. Newhall, Capt. Hardy, Mr. Meeker, and others. Col. Strode delivered the oration. Of miners with uncut hair, red flannel shirts, and heavy boots drawn over their pants, there were a great number, all eager to dance and enjoy themselves to the worth of their money; but I must say to their praise, that they all behaved like gentlemen. The ladies were few: Mrs. David Bates and her two sisters (later Mrs. Newhall and Mrs. Swan), Mrs. Lockwood, Mrs. Henry, the wife of Capt. Henry, a government agent; three or four miners' wives smoking corncob pipes completed the assembly.

In 1827, during Red Bird’s Winnebago rising, John H. Fonda ran the mail from Fort Dearborn (today’s Chicago) to Fort Howard at Green Bay. He described his attire thus:

My dress was a la hunter, one common to the early period, and best suited to my purpose. A smoke-tanned buckskin hunting shirt. Trimmed leggings of the same material, a wolf-skin chapeau with the animal’s tail still attached; and moccasins of elk hide. I must have had the appearance of the perfect Nimrod. My arms consisted of a heavy mountaineering rifle I bought in St. Louis. …I had the barrel shortened and the cheek piece cut off, and a strap attached to it, so I could sling it over my back. Suspended by a strap from my shoulder was a large horn containing two pounds of [gun] powder. Buckled around my waist and over the hunting shirt, was a belt containing a sheath-knife and two pistols… attached to the belt also, was a pouch of mink skin, wherein I carried my rifle bullets. The foregoing comprised my arms and accouterment of offence [sic] if we except a short-handled axe, thrust into the waistbelt.

Fonda wrote that what was needed to protect one from cold weather was good hunting shirts, flannel and deer-skin leggings, extra moccasins, and a Mackinaw blanket. (3)

William S. "Billy" Hamilton emigrated from New York via Illinois to the lead region in 1828. The youngest son of Revolutionary War hero and former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, he settled on a claim known as Hamilton’s Diggings. Billy Hamilton was well known in the region, as much for his congenial air as for his mode of life:

[He]was a gentleman of much natural ability, but of eccentric habits. He never married, and, though naturally of a social and genial disposition, shunned all society. He adopted great plainness of garb, and while working in his mines lived and dressed more coarsely than any of his workmen. With his coarse clothes, slouched hat, bare feet, and his pantaloons rolled up to his knees and covered with mud and dirt, he would hardly have been recognized as the son of the greatest American statesman, and one of the most polished gentlemen of any period or country.

In contrast, Hamilton’s biographer provided a different picture, probably using information provided by Hamilton’s nephew Schuyler Hamilton: Dressed in a smoke-tanned buckskin hunting shirt and leggings of the same material, wolfskin chapeau with the animal’s tail still attached; carrying two pistols, a rifle and a mackinaw [sic] blanket; a powder-horn suspended on a strap thrown over the shoulder, a knife in his belt, and a short handled axe, Hamilton was like a reconstructed Daniel Boone, who had died only a few years before. (Note: The comparison between this description of Hamilton’s dress, and that of Henry Fonda appears to be more than mere coincidence!) (4)

In 1829, the April 11 edition of the Miners’ Journal carried an advertisement for "Titus," a black runaway: ...about five feet—inches high, 24 years of age, light complexion, or might be called by some a dark mullatto…had on when he went away a Pea Jacket of olive fearnought [a heavy woolen cloth], stout trousers of the same material, two red flannel shirts, two round jackets and one vest; a raccoon skin cap, his shoes had plates round the toes as well as the heels. (5)

Thomas Ford, in his History of Illinois, recorded a change in the appearance of Illinois males:

After the year 1830 a man dressed in the costume of the territory, which was a raccoon-skin cap, linsey hunting-shirt, buckskin breeches and moccasins, with a belt around the waist, to which the butcher-knife and tomahawk on the side and back were appended, was rarely to be seen. The blue linsey hunting shirt with red or white fringe had given place to the cloth coat; the raccoon-skin cap with the tail of the animal dangling down behind had been thrown aside for hats of wool or fur. Boots and shoes had supplanted the deer-skin moccasin, and the leather breeches strapped tight around the ankle had disappeared before unmentionables of more modern material.

In early March, 1831, John and Juliette Kinzie traveled from Galena through the Mineral District to Fort Dearborn, at present-day Chicago. She and her spouse stopped off for the evening at Hamilton's Diggings, and located Billy Hamilton, himself. As was the custom on the frontier, Hamilton invited the Kinzies to supper and offered lodging for the night. Mrs. Kinzie recorded the happenings when supper was announced:

The blowing of a horn was the signal for the entrance of ten or twelve miners, who took their places below us at the table. They were the roughest-looking set of men I ever beheld, and their language was as uncouth as their persons. They wore hunting-shirts, trowsers, and moccasins of deerskin, the former being ornamented at the seams with fringe of the same, with a colored belt about the waist, in which was stuck a large hunting-knife, each gave the appearance of a brigand. (6)

By June, 1832, the Black Hawk War was in its third month. George Wallace Jones, operator of lead diggings and a smelter near Sinsinawa Mound (located in today’s southwestern Grant County, Wisconsin) and good friend of Colonel Henry Dodge, described the dress of both Dodge and himself: Col. Dodge was waiting for me to accompany him to take command of some 1,500 volunteers from Southern Illinois. He was in his buckskin, sassafras tanned, hunting shirt, and Kentucky Jean pants, just like my own." (7)

Captain Elijah Iles recorded a leg of his company’s scouting expedition from Dixion’s Ferry to Apple River Fort, and on to Galena in mid-June, 1832: Next morning, in passing into a grove of timber, my front scouts again came under whip and reported Indians. I asked where. They pointed to my two scouts on the right, trying to catch an Indian pony; one had on a red shirt, and they mistook them for Indians. (8)

Along with boots and moccasins, men in the region wore shoes. During a May 31, 1832 horse ride to Kaskaskia, John A. Wakefield crossed numerous creeks and streams. He wrote: The weather being very cold for that time of year, I called on a house to empty the water from my shoes and to wring my socks. The shoes with plates round the toes as well as the heels worn by Titus, the black man who ran away in 1829, has been previously noted. (9)

The Sauk attack on Apple River Fort on June 24, 1832 left numerous settlers whose homes had been plundered by the retreating war party. In 1833, John Murdack petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for compensation on possessions lost during the raid. His claim included: 5 Cotton Shirts and 1 pr. Cassinette Pantaloons. (10)

These accounts of male clothing, recorded by eyewitnesses, indicate a version different from that reported by Dr. Eby. While I concede that the mantra of pioneer self-sufficiency has been overstated by some pioneer contemporaries and modern historians, an assertion that the settlers of the mineral district were not "frontiersmen" and they wore broadcloth clothing, and not buckskin, is incorrect on both counts. The Mineral District was in fact the frontier, and was so described by the Eastern press, and by Eastern politicians and numerous writers who traveled about the region during the 1820s and 30s. And while it is true that hide clothing in and of itself does not a “frontiersman” make, our laboring ancestors knew well the durability and cheapness of deerskin clothing when working in the lead diggings or clearing brush from fields for planting. Easterners like Billy Hamilton also knew of the frontier image and mystique that hide clothing certainly conjured in the eyes of visitors and commentators.

While men strove for broadcloth clothing that marked both status and success, many followed the traditions of their youth, the examples of earlier settlers, and the availability of store-bought, ready-made garments when obtaining clothing. Happily, a few of our ancestors set down on paper their recollections of everyday clothing of everyday working men in the United States Mineral District.

Notes:

1. Elijia Iles, Sketches of Early Life and Times in Kentucky, Missouri, and Illinois, p. 7 (hereinafter cited as "Iles.")

2. Susan Burdick Davis, Old Forts and Real Folks, p. 191.

3. Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Vol. 5, pp. 226-227. Fonda described his companion, a Frenchman named Boisely: I directed him [Boisely] to exchange his dress—rags would be the best term—for a comfortable out-fit [sic], obtained at my expense, and had the satisfaction of seeing him transformed into a comparatively respectable looking man. He was accoutered in a style similar to myself. He sported a long Indian gun, and always carried a large knife, pistol and hatchet in his belt, and bullet-pouch and powder horn under his arm. To the horn were tied by sinew thongs several charms, which he believed possessed some mysterious power that preserved him from harm.

It is also interesting to note John Fonda’s recollection of firearms in the territory: Much trouble was apprehended from the Indian tribes generally, who were jealous at the encroachment of the emigrants, especially in the region of the Lead Diggings. The emigrant, settler, hunter, and trapper never parted with their trusty rifle either day or night. Weapons were an essential part of a man’s costume—his daily, yes his constant companions—they were in the hands of the traveler, the homes of the hardy squatter, and had there been any sanctuaries in the Territory then, I believe they would have been found in the pulpits. The rifle provided food for the hunter. It also executed the arbitrary law of the land—self defense, and its decrees were final.

4. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 32, p. 688; Sylvan J. Muldoon, Alexander Hamilton’s Pioneer Son: The Life and Times of Colonel William Stephen Hamilton, Harrisburg: The Aurand Press, 1930, pp. 105-6.

5. Lucy Eldersvelt Murphy, A Gathering of Rivers, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, p. 213, n 123.

6. Juliette Kinzie, Wau-Bun, p. 112. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa Historical Record, Vol. VI, p. 421, William Salter, “Henry Dodge II. In the Black Hawk War, 1832"; Crawford B. Thayer, Hunt for a Shadow, p. 55. Salter offered additional insights into the dress of George Wallace Jones, whom he quoted: My friend, Hon. Thomas McKnight, then the U. S. Agent of the Lead Mines at Galena, afterwards Receiver of Public Monies at Dubuque, sent a message to me at my then residence and fort at Sinsinawa Mound, that my brother-in-law had either been killed or taken prisoner by the Indians. I immediately mounted my horse, in my buckskin hunting shirt, Kentucky jeans pantaloons, and put out for the rescue of my brother-in-law and his companions, having my double-barreled gun, well loaded with buck-shot, a holster of pistols, and two in my belt, with a bowie-knife.

7. William Salter, The Life of Henry Dodge. Burlington, IA: publisher not known, 1890, p. 53.

8. Iles, p. 7; 48-9.

9. Frank E. Stevens, Wakefield’s History of the Black Hawk War, p. 53

10. Floyd Mansberger and Christopher Stratton, “Perfectly Panic Struck” The Archaeology of the Apple River Fort (Jo Daviess County, Illinois), p. 9. Per original records on display at Fort Atkinson Historic Site, Nebraska, the U. S. Army provided cotton issue shirts to its enlisted men as early as 1820-1.

SPECIAL THANKS to the LaSalle County Historical Society and Museum for their generous permission to phtotograph the Hall vest and bonnet!