Book Review: Cloth and Costume, 1750 to 1800: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania

Cloth and Costume, 1750 to 1800: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Cumberland County Historical Society, 1995. By Tandy and Charles Hersh. Illustrated; cloth. Carlisle

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With their customary meticulous scholarship Tandy and Charles Hersh have researched textile and costume to present a richly detailed study of the people who settled in Cumberland County. A vivid picture emerges through their analysis of 1,220 estate inventories, wills, tax lists, indictments, and an impressive array of other county records and resources. Eighteenth-century Cumberland County, with 33 widespread townships and three towns, offers exceptional opportunity for study of the structure of life on what was then considered a frontier. The authors observe that "people living in a community offering 138 types of cloth were very much a part of the world of fashion. Households and costumes were not limited by a lack of choice of the world's fabrics."

The complex subject of textile/costume has been arranged into chapters that include fiber and yarn production, local cloth, commercial textiles, household textiles, men's and women's clothing and accessories, and an intriguing chapter on supporting trades, highlighting the many skilled craftspeople and artisans in the county-hatters, blue dyers, bleachers, silversmiths, leather breeches-makers, peddlers, haulers and innumerable others.

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