TEACHER'S GUIDE TO
History and Folklife of the Kentucky Frontier
Lesson 10: The Sunday Best
| The frontier costume was a good example of clothing shaped by the times and conditions of the period. Ignoring contemporary styles, a man wore sturdy homemade leather shirts, leggings, and moccasins or shirts and pants of coarse linsey woolsey woven by his wife. Women and children dressed in drab colored homespun. Square-toed shoes or moccasins protected their feet in cold weather, but in summer, they wore no shoes. Most people had only one or two changes of clothes. "Boughten" shoes and clothing were saved for special occasions and were usually known as the "Sunday best." |
The "meeting-house," as it was always called, was built on a ridge a quarter of a mile south of the village, hard-by the great road leading to Lexington. A couple of acres surrounding it constituted the burying ground for the station and its neighborhood. A number of walnut and flowering locust trees had been left standing within the inclosure, and between it and the "big road." The house was built of logs, hewn on both sides, and had a shingled roof, one of the first I ever saw; but the finish of everything was rude, and in the winter it must have been an uncomfortable place.......my heart still turns with emotion to the bright and cheerful Sabbath mornings, which were to me like the daily sunshine of an hour, through some opening in the thick leaves of the woods, to the little blossoms below. Several things conspired to afford me this delightful effect. It was a day of rest from the labors of the field,.... ...It was also a day for dressing up; and none but those who labor through the week in coarse and dirty clothes can estimate the cheering influence of a clean face and feet, a clean shirt, and "boughten" clothes on a Sabbath morning.... ...-mother in a calico dress, with her black silk bonnet covering a newly ironed cap, with the tabs (flaps) tied beneath her chin with a piece of narrow ribbon; father with his shoes just greased and blacked (by myself) with fat and soot well mixed together; in his shirt sleeves, if the weather was hot, or in his Sunday coat, if cool; a worn dress hat over his short smooth black hair; a bandana handkerchief in his pocket for that day; and his walking stick in his hand, or the baby in his arms; myself in my fustian jacket, with my hat brushed and set up, my feet clean, and a new rag on some luckless "stubbed" and festering toe; the younger children in their best Sunday clothes.
from Daniel Drake, Pioneer Life in Kentucky, 1785-1800: A Series of Reminscential
letters from Daniel Drake, MD of Cincinnati to his Children. (Cincinnati: Clark & Co., 1870).
After reading Daniel Drake's letter
1. Compare the clothing worn by Daniel Drake's mother and father with those worn by adults today. Are hats considered necessary accessories by the Drakes? By modern Americans?2. For what sort of occasions do we dress up today?
3. How does Daniel Drake's description of a typical Sunday compare with what your family does on the weekend?4. Define the following words: ridge burying ground hewn rude bonnet fustian jacket
This lesson has been adapted by Jennifer Small from A Teacher's Guide to Pioneer Life
in South Central Kentucky, by Nancy Disher Baird and Carol Crowe-Carraco.