52nd Annual Delaware Show

Matthew Skic is a Lois F. McNeil Fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. This article is generously sponsored by Pam and Rick Mones. across the Atlantic, the sermon gained widespread popularity. In light of this evidence, I speculate that the Winterthur waistcoat belt may have been made in support of the ideology expressed in one of the radical sermons. 4 This political purpose connects the belt to other material culture of the period referencing American liberty. In 1775 militiamen of the newly formed minute battalions in Tidewater and northern Virginia wore linen hunting shirts with Patrick Henry’s slogan “Liberty or Death” sewn onto the breast. 5 Metal “45” pins showed support for John Wilkes’s radicalism in Parliament and his advocacy for the liberties of the thirteen American colonies. The 1775 satirical mezzotint A New Method of MACARONY MAKING, as practised at BOSTON depicts such adornment (fig. 4) . Apart from clothing, American militiamen and Continental soldiers showed their support for independence, General Washington, and the Continental Congress on powder horns, weapons, cartridge boxes, and other accoutrements— all examples of the material culture of display. As a conspicuous expression of political ideology, Winterthur’s waistcoat belt certainly fits into that culture. As a rare surviving artifact, perhaps more important is the possibility that its identification as a waistcoat belt might lead to further study of this heretofore largely unrecognized article of male clothing. 1. “THREE POUNDS Reward,” Pennsylvania Gazette, September 18, 1776; “RUN away from the subscriber,” Virginia Gazette, March 7, 1777; “Two Half Johannesses Reward,” Pennsylvania Gazette, December 19, 1781. In the late eighteenth century, “jacket” and “waistcoat” were often used interchangeably to refer to the same garment. The only known article specifically addressing belted waistcoats is James Kochan, “The Belted Waistcoat,” Military Collector & Historian 33, no. 4 (Winter 1981): 178–79. 2. Alden O’Brien, e-mail to the author, April 13, 2015. 3. “RUN away from York Town,” Virginia Gazette, June 17, 1773. “Letters from the Marquis de Lafayette to Hon. Henry Laurens, 1777–1780,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 7, no. 3 (July 1906). My thanks to Neal Hurst for helping to locate Lafayette’s letters. 4. The printed verse is based on Galatians 5:1 (King James Version): “Standfast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” John Wesley to Jane Barton, March 15, 1770; John Wesley to Mrs. Marston, April 1, 1770; John Wesley to Elizabeth Ritchie, June 3, June 23, July 31, 1774. For Wesley’s letters, see “The Letters of John Wesley,” ed. George and Michael Mattei Lyons, http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-letters-of-john-wesley. Ch arles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz, eds., American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, vol. 1 (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1983), 185,¨208, 316, 446, 538. Special thanks to Linda Baumgarten, who suggested I research Jacob Duché; Jacob Duché, The Duty of Standing Fast in Our Spiritual and Temporal Liberties, A Sermon (London: T. Evans, 1775); “On Friday evening,” Pennsylvania Gazette, July 12, 1775. 5. Neal Hurst, “‘ kind of armour, being peculiar to America’ : The American Hunting Shirt” (Unpublished thesis, The College of William and Mary, 2013), 19–20. Weekend lectures sponsored by — 161 —