18th Century Linen Clothing

Text references to linen clothing in colors other than white

The predominant color in the text references – as in the extant examples above – is brown. However, “brown linen” may also refer to unbleached linen, like the natural/buff colored linen garments listed elsewhere on this page.

See also the blue aprons notebook page for additional references & depictions relating to blue linen aprons.

Neal Hurst, associate curator of costume and textiles at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, writes:

In Williamsburg the 2nd Virginia regiment is having their osnaburg hunting shirts dyed purple: “It is Expected that each Capt. will with all Expedition Provide Legins for his men & hunting shirts Dy’d of a purple Coulour…” (Orderly Book of the 2d Virginia Regiment, October 27, 1775)

If we continue on the hunting shirt trend, of which are generally made of linen for the continental army: In 1776, a German officer who faced American soldiers at the Battle of Long Island, described them wearing “black, white, and purple linen blouses”
Bernhard A. Uhlendorf, Revolution in America: Confidential Letters and Journals 1776-1784 of Adjutant General Major Baurmeister of the Hessian Forces (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1957), 38.

American artist Charles Willson Peale also described a multitude of colors worn on hunting shirts in the Philadelphia area and claimed that “very often these shirts were dyed brown – yellow, pink, and blue black, any colour according to the fancy of the companies.”
Jules David Prown, Art as Evidence: Writing on Art and Material Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 170. [This page is viewable via Google Books.]

The backcountry traveler John Smyth also claimed that its inhabitants chose a wide variety of color and said “Their hunting, or rifle shirts, they have also died in a variety of colours, some yellow, others red, some brown, and many wear them quite white.”
John Ferdinand Smyth Stuart, A Tour of the United States of America (Dublin: Printed by G. Perrin, 1784), 116. [You can also read this in The English Review or The Scots Magazine.]

For more of his research on hunting shirts, see “kind of armour, being peculiar to America”: The American Hunting Shirt.

“The Regimentals or Cloathing for the private Men are to be Camblet Coats, Brown Linen Waiſtcoats, with two Pair of Canvas Trouzes for each Man.” (Quadriennium Annae Postremum, Or, The Political State of Great Britain, 1740)

“3 Pair of brown Linen [Trowsers]” (Virginia Gazette, September 26, 1745)

“a Pair of brown Linen Trowsers” (Virginia Gazette, August 7-14, 1746)

“brown Linen Trowsers” (Virginia Gazette, May 9, 1751)

“a Pair of brown Linen Trousers” (Virginia Gazette, June 18, 1752)

“a coarse brown linen waistcoat” (The New-York Gazette, August 8, 1765)

“a short brown linen jacket” (Virginia Gazette, June 27, 1766)

“The cloathing of the negroes (the houſhold ſlaves excepted) is ſcarce ſufficient to anſwer the demands of modeſty. Several modern compilerso f the hiſtory of our Weſt-India ſettlements have enumarated ſtockings and ſhoes among the articles of cloathing for the negroes, though nothing could more certainly betray their ignorance of this ſubject, ſince a ſlave in ſtockings and ſhoes, in theſe countries, would be as uncommon a ſpectacle, as a negro inſtructed in the principles of Chriſtianity; and if any of them have either ſhirts, breeches, or petticoats, they are the produce of their own private induſtry, as their maſters furniſh only a piece of coarſe blue, or brown linen, which is applied to the middle in both ſexes, and a blanket, with which the ſlave covers himſelf at night, ſleeping on boards only.” (“The unhappy State of Slaves in Berbice [Guyana],” The London Magazine, 1769)

“a pair of short brown linen breeches” (Virginia Gazette, June 21, 1770)

“a pair of new brown linen breeches” (Virginia Gazette, June 21, 1770)

“a brown linen [coat]” (Virginia Gazette, January 10, 1771)

“one brown Linen Coat” (Virginia Gazette, August 22, 1771)

“short brown Linen Breeches” (Virginia Gazette, September 10, 1772)

“brown linen waistcoat” (The New-York Gazette, July 5, 1773)

“had on a brown linen jacket and petticoat” (Virginia Gazette, August 4, 1774)

“had on a brown linen coat” (Virginia Gazette, August 11, 1774)

“a Yallow Linnen under Waiſtcoat Otter colour” (Connecticut Journal, September 9, 1774)

“had on when she went away a brown linen jacket and petticoat” (Virginia Gazette, January 12, 1775)

“Voltaire’s Dress. ‘On the two days I saw him, he wore white cloth shoes, white woolen stockings, red breeches, with a night-gown and waistcoat of blue linen, flowered, and lined with yellow. He had on a grizzle wig with three ties, and over it a silk night-cap embroidered with gold and silver.” (History of Friedrich II of Prussia, April 1776; H/T Jennifer Heim)

“a brown Linen Jacket” (The New-York Gazette, July 15, 1776)

“one brown and one white Linen Waistcoat, one brown Linen Breeches” (The New-York Gazette, July 29, 1776)

“brown linen trowsers” (The New-York Gazette, October 14, 1776)

“a Pair of brown Linen Trousers” (Virginia Gazette, May 2, 1777)

“a pair of brown linen breeches” (Virginia Gazette, July 10, 1778)

“four under jackets, two of them striped, one brown linen, the other brown broad cloth” (Connecticut Gazette, July 6, 1781)

“two pair of old brown linen Trowsers” (Connecticut Courant, November 19, 1782)

“a pair of brown linen breeches” (Connecticut Courant, June 3, 1783)

“a brown linen short Coat, Jacket and Breaches … brown linen Jacket in Breaches” (Connecticut Courant, July 8, 1783)

“brown Linen outside Jacket” (Middlesex Gazette, September 12, 1789)

“brown linen overalls” (Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser, December 3, 1789)

“a pair of brown linen trowsers” (Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser, November 4, 1790)

“one new pair linen [trowsers] colour’d yellow” (Connecticut Journal, July 25, 1792)

“brown linen overalls” (Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser, July 4, 1793)

“a pair of yellow linen overalls” (Connecticut Gazette, September 3, 1795)

“At eight in the morning we go in diſhabile to the pump-room, which is crowded like a Welſh fair; and there you ſee the higheſt quality and loweſt tradesfolks, joſtling each other, without ceremony, hail fellow, well met … The ladies wear jackets and petticoats of brown linen, with chip hats, in which they fix their handkerchiefs to wipe the ſweat from their faces; but, truly, whether it is owing to the ſteam that ſurrounds them, or the heat of the water, or the nature of the dreſs, or to all theſe cauſes together, they look ſo fluſhed, and ſo frightful, that I always turn my eyes another way.” (The Miscellaneous Works of Tobias Smollett, M. D., 1796)

“a shirt and overalls of brown linen” (Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser, September 24, 1796)

“Had on when she eloped a blue striped Virginia cloth Jacket and brown linen petticoat” (The Times; and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser, August 7, 1799)

“a pair of short brown linen trowsers” (Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser, August 27, 1799)