I wish to state that I see no period reason or documentation on why a farmer’s/carter’s/waggoneer’s frock could not or was not used during the 18th century to hunt in.
However, it also seems very clear to me that 18th century people who very well understood the meaning of the word “frock” and who actually lived in the area where the then “new” kind of garment called a “Hunting Shirt” was first developed and those who knew them well, were very adamant that a Hunting Shirt and Frock were two different items of clothing.
The Clerk in Augusta County, VA in 1759 surely knew what a Frock was and he still recorded one article of clothing as a Hunting Shirt and not a Frock in County Records. This is elegant proof that even by that time, there was something different or unique about the Hunting Shirt that set it apart from the very common frock of the day and the term “Hunting Shirt” was well known in that County by that time. Otherwise, that Clerk would have used the older/more common term frock.
“From this point forward [after the 1759 documentation], an eight-year void exists in the documentation relating to early hunting shirts. The executors of John Smith’s estate lived in Augusta County and certainly knew the parlances for the garments they listed. The
hunting shirt differed from the four other shirts listed and was worth a shilling more. Unfortunately, why those men chose to record the garment in that manner may be lost to history. The term hunting shirt would next appear not in a private context, but publically in a newspaper in 1768.
Sometime during the early Summer of 1768, two convict servant men sent to Virginia as punishment for stealing, decided to break their Indenture and run away from their Masters Robert Whitley and John Maxwell at the forks of the James River in Augusta County. [The same County the Clerk first recorded the term “Hunting Shirt” nine years earlier.] The owners paid for an advertisement in William Rind’s newspaper,
The Virginia Gazette, and it appeared in print on June 23, 1768. Like most advertisements, the authors provided excellent description of the two men’s clothing in order to identify them. …..The other man George Wilkinson, stood about 5 feet 6 inches high, of a sandy complexion, and red hair. He had on when he went away, a new felt hat,
a hunting shirt, and calico waistcoat, with old buckskin breeches, blue leggings and old shoes.
In 1770 and 1771,
The Virginia Gazette published two other runaways from Augusta County, [Again the same County the Clerk first recorded the term “Hunting Shirt” in 1759] wearing
hunting shirts, while at the same time the Pennsylvania Gazette published its first
hunting shirt reference.
http://www.academia.edu/3336557/_kind_of_armour_being_peculiar_to_America_The_American_Hunting_Shirt
So…..rather than NO documentation of Hunting Shirts prior to the AWI, there indeed were some and most from the actual area the Hunting Shirt was developed and worn.
Let’s go further forward in time:
J. Trumbull, adamant about the difference between the waggoner's frock and the venerable hunting shirt, served in a Connecticut Regiment and had the opportunity to serve adjacent to Morgan and his Maryland and Virginia riflemen in 1775. Here is what he wrote about it.
"Sir-
You expressed an apprehension that the rifle-dress of General MORGAN may be mistaken hereafter for a wagoner's frock, which he, perhaps, wore when on the expedition with General Braddock ; there is no more resemblance between the two dresses, than between a cloak and a coat ; the wagoner's frock was intended, as the present cartman's, to cover and protect their other clothes, and is merely a long coarse shirt reaching below the knee; the dress of the Virginia rifle-men who came to Cambridge in 1775, (among whom was MORGAN,) was an elegant loose dress reaching to the middle of the thigh, ornamented with fringes in various parts, and meeting the pantaloons of the same material and color, fringed and ornamented in a corresponding style. The officers wore the usual crimson sash over this, and around the waist, the straps, belts, &c., were black, forming, in my opinion, a very picturesque and elegant, as well as useful dress. It cost a trifle; the soldier could wash it at any brook he passed ; and however worn and ragged and dirty his other clothing might be, when this was thrown over it, he was in elegant uniform...which the battalion companies had adopted this rifle-dress of white linen with black straps and hats...the rifle-dress is loose, and the sleeves above the elbow loose like the ladies' dresses of the present day.. -.J.T." [3]
Longacre, James B., and Herring, James; “The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.” Volume III. Henry Perkins, Philadelphia. 1836
And:
"...They have besides a Body of irregulars, or rifle Men, whose dress it is hard to describe. They take a piece of Ticklenburgh, or Tan Cloth that is stout and put it in a Tann Vatt, untill it has the shade of a dry, or fading leaf, they they make a kind of Frock of it reaching down below the knee, open before, with a large Cape, htey wrapp it round the tight on a March, & tye it with their Belt in which hangs their Tomahawk, their Hatts as the others, and take their posts, to hit their mark..."[4]
-Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 3 Jun 1775
Though Doddridge actually wrote the following later, he was referring back to the Pre AWI days when he wrote the following so that people who had never seen nor heard of the Hunting Shirt may understand the way it was made:
Here's the Doddridge quote:
"The
hunting shirt was universally worn. This was a kind of loose frock, reaching half way down the thighs, with large sleeves,
open before, and so wide as to lap over a foot or more when belted. The cap[e] was large, and sometimes handsomely fringed with a raveled piece of cloth of a different color from that of the hunting shirt itself. The bosom of this dress served as a wallet to hold a chunk of bread, cakes, jerk, tow for wiping the barrel of the rifle, or any other necessary for the hunter or warrior.”
Another later quote from Spence earlier in this thread, talking about the Hunting Shirt from someone who talked to people who had worn the Hunting Shirt or seen it worn:
Blane, WIlliam N., An Excursion through the United States and Canada, during the Years 1822-3 by an English Gentleman
pg. 111"The early settlers of Kentucky all wore the "hunting-shirt," which is still the common dress of the hunters and backwoodsmen. It is
a kind of short loose doublet, reaching about half-way down the thighs, with an upright collar, and a small but full cape. It is kept together in front with two or three buttons or hooks; and is as loose as an English farmer's smock-frock, but is fastened round the waist by a broad leather belt, in which hang the tomahawk and hunting knife. Over the shoulder passes another belt, to which is suspended the powder-horn, and the fur-pouch for bullets and wadding. The hunting shirt is made of coarse blue linen, or (as they call it) linsey-woolsey, and is bound round the collar, cape, cuffs, and edges, with a red fringe. This dress, which is very commodious and serviceable, is one of the most becoming and elegant I have ever seen."
It is not just my opinion, but rather documented evidence the term “Hunting Shirt” was indeed recorded a number of times and by their own descriptions, certainly not a common or ordinary frock of the period.
Gus
..., going from the field to the village square would've been, though. Nice detail of the woman in the lower right showing her wearing stays, and notice that the woman in the background, nursing a child, has no stays. It's pretty well documented in America that the different ethnic groups had different standards. German men were known to even plow without wearing a shirt, often had full beards, and German women didn't have the same rules about wearing stays as did their British neighbors.
