What Stockings Did Poor Colonists Wear? Evidence From Rhode Island Runaway Ads, 1760–1783

What were the stockings of ordinary working people in 18th-century America made of, and what colors were they? Are reenactors and interpreters showing what was actually common? In a study published by the National Park Service at Minute Man National Historical Park, Paul Dickfoss, whose byline lists Captain Lewis Duboy's company of the 3rd New York Regiment, answers by counting every stocking worn, carried or stolen by runaways advertised in Rhode Island newspapers from 1760 through 1783.

The evidence

Runaway advertisements for enslaved people, servants, apprentices, sailors and others who had fled often described what the person was wearing. Dickfoss drew on two published collections of these notices from Rhode Island papers. Not every runaway was from Rhode Island: some sailors jumped ship there, and others came from nearby colonies, such as one man who "RAN away from John De Peyster, living in New York," so the study may reflect a wider region.

A few rules shaped the count:

• Ads printed in more than one paper were counted once.
• Stockings known to be stolen were kept in the data, although they often differed from what most runaways wore.
• Only four pairs are known to have belonged to women, three of them stolen. Because merchants' ads rarely said whether stockings were for men or women, Dickfoss assumes his conclusions apply to both.
• Deserting Continental soldiers were counted separately, so that issued stockings would not skew the civilian results.
• Where an ad gave no exact number, "several" pairs was counted as three, a "parcel" as four, and "a Number" as three.

Many ads described jackets and coats but not stockings. Dickfoss suggests three reasons: the stockings may have been unremarkable (one ad mentions only a "sundry pair of stockings"), shoes and breeches or petticoats may have hidden them, or the runaway may simply have had none. Some clearly did not. In October 1770 "An indented NEGRO GIRL, about Eighteen or Nineteen Years of Age" ran away "bare-footed and bare-legged." One of "Two Apprentice Boys" who fled in September 1769 wore "Shoes without Stockings," and an apprentice from Tiverton with blue eyes and sandy hair left barefoot in September 1783.

How many pairs

Nearly every runaway was described with one pair of stockings. Most of those with more had two, and the most anyone had was about four. Ten ads called the stockings "old" and only three "new." Two runaways wore "Stockings without feet," and one had a pair "newly footed," a reminder that worn-out stockings were given new feet. Almost every ad said "stockings"; four said "hose," and none said "socks."

Material: overwhelmingly wool

Of 167 stocking descriptions, 79 named a material:

Among the wool stockings, 66% were "yarn," a coarse, locally made wool from carded short fibers; 31% were worsted, a finer wool from combed fibers; and 3% were called "woolen." Stockings described as "mixed" were not counted as wool, but the two that named their material were wool ("mixt blue Yarn" and "mixed ribb'd worsted"), so the true share of wool may be higher.

Wool was worn all year. In winter, 87% of described stockings were wool, and in summer 71%, a difference Dickfoss found statistically insignificant: most poor people wore their one pair, of wool, whatever the season. Why is not yet known. Wool may have been easiest to get, cheaper to knit than fine linen thread, or more durable for someone with only one pair.

Almost all stockings seem to have been knitted. "Light cloth Worsted Stockings" may mean the color rather than stockings sewn from cloth, and a "conceited" apprentice's "Pair of blue and White Crape Stockings" may have been worsted rather than silk, since crape could be made of either. No stockings were described as clocked, that is, decorated on either side with a pattern knitted in or embroidered afterward.

Color: white, grey and blue

Of the 167 descriptions, 89 gave a color:

No purple, red, pink, orange or yellow stockings appeared at all. There were no green ones either, though "mixed green Stockings" turned up in 1786, the only green pair in Rhode Island runaway ads from 1730 to 1800.

"Mixed" stockings were knitted from yarn twisted from two colors of fiber, giving a salt-and-pepper look. Because every two-colored pair from 1760 to 1783 was either called mixed or given no pattern, and no striped stockings appear in Rhode Island ads until March 1797 or spotted ones until June 1799, Dickfoss thinks most two-colored pairs were mixed, which would make mixed stockings about 18% of the total, as common as blue. The single "ribb'd mottled worsted" pair was most likely mixed as well. Stripes and spots, he concludes, were uncommon if they existed at all in this period.

Black stockings show a curious pattern. None appear in ads from 1730 to 1750 or in the 1780s and 1790s, yet 7 of 39 pairs in the 1760s and 2 of 100 in the 1770s were black. That may be a brief fashion or just a quirk of small numbers.

Deserting soldiers

The ads described stockings for 23 deserting Continental soldiers. Of those whose material was given, 78% wore wool, mostly yarn, and a few wore thread or linen; none had ribbed or mixed stockings. Of those whose color was given, 68% wore white, with four in grey and two in blue.

What it means

Most poor people owned one pair of wool yarn stockings and wore them all year. White, grey and blue were the common colors, white-and-blue mixes led among mixed stockings, and black may have had a moment in the 1760s. Most soldiers wore white wool yarn.

Estate inventories of the middling sort and the well-off in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, likewise show many wool stockings and few of cotton or silk. Until regional differences are studied, Dickfoss advises treating cotton and silk stockings as uncommon. His broader lesson: reading isolated descriptions can mislead, because a handful of mentions of cotton stockings makes them seem common when they were not. Counting every reference in a population and working out percentages gives a baseline that regional and other differences can then refine.

Sources

• Paul Dickfoss, "'grey worsted,' 'mixt blue Yarn,' 'White ribb'd worsted': Stockings of Runaways Advertised in Rhode Island," National Park Service, Minute Man National Historical Park. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/stockings-of-runaways-advertised-in-rhode-island-by-paul-dickfoss.htm
• The study's data come from Maureen Alice Taylor, Runaways, Deserters, and Notorious Villains From Rhode Island Newspapers, vol. 1 (1995), and Maureen Alice Taylor and John Wood Sweet, vol. 2 (2001). It also draws on Florence M. Montgomery, Textiles in America 1650–1870 (1984); Michael Cleary, Clothing and Textiles in New Jersey 1776–1782 (1976); and Tandy and Charles Hersh, Cloth and Costume 1750 to 1800, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania (1995), whose definitions and findings are paraphrased here.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.