Laboring men wore leather and coarse fabrics and for others there were suits, doublets, waistcoats and breeches. Trousers are mentioned; also a cane and periwigs. Of caps and hats there were a number of kinds--felt, castor, demi-castor, and even straw. Capt. George Corwin, a Salem merchant, owned a cloth coat trimmed with silver lace, a velvet coat, a tabby doublet, an old-fashioned Dutch satin doublet, four cloaks of various kinds, two pairs of golden topped gloves, one embroidered pair, and a pair with black fringe. He also took his walks abroad wearing silk stockings, with a hat encircled by a silver band and carrying a silver-headed cane or a plate hilt rapier, according to fashion. He possessed two silver watches. Who shall say that the men and women of the New England colonies did not dress well and live well in the early days according to their means?[34]
[34] In the inventory of the estate of Henry Landis of Boston, Shopkeeper, deceased, taken, Dec. 17, 1651, appears his clothing, viz.:
1 suite of fine broad cloth £1.10.0 1 French serge suite, 18.0 1 Stuffe Cassoke & 1 pr breeches, 16.0 1 French serge Cassocke £1. 0.0 1 pr red drawers, 5.0 1 wascoate 5.0 1 pr cotton breeches 2.0 5 pr stockings & a hoode 12.0 1 hatte 2.6
--_Suffolk Co. Probate Rds._, Vol. II, p. 127.
In the late 1600's, and until comparatively recent times, working men very generally wore frocks, a custom in dress that dates back into the centuries. It was an almost universal custom for farmers and those employed in the mechanic trades to wear a frock. The farmer generally looked upon the frock as an outer garment--something to put on in colder weather or to slip on to protect underclothing or to conceal an untidy appearance. It was a garment to take off on coming into the house or to put on when going to the village or to market.
Carters or truckmen also habitually wore frocks. Drake, in his "Landmarks of Boston," describes the old-time trucks, not to exceed eighteen feet in length, with their loads of hogsheads of molasses and other heavy merchandise balanced on the one axle and the two horses harnessed tandem, the head horse led by the truckman. With the disappearance of these ponderous vehicles also went "that distinctive body of men, the 'Boston Truckmen,' who once formed a leading and attractive feature of our public processions, with their white frocks and black hats, mounted with their magnificent truck-horses. Hardy and athletic, it would be hard to find their equals on either side of the water. The long jiggers now used are scarcely less objectionable than the old trucks." Drake wrote this only seventy-five years ago but the "jiggers" of his time have now almost entirely disappeared.