From New Shoes to Old Soles

Stories in the Life Cycle of Eighteenth-Century Shoes

by Kimberly Alexander, Ph.D.

The lifecycle of shoes: what happens after initial purchase, years of wearing by an owner, or perhaps a later repurposing for new uses? Shoes reveal exciting and unanticipated stories lingering in their eighteenth century soles. In the journey of a sparkling new pair of Georgian brocaded silk shoes, bits of which may ultimately end up in a privy pit, or of new shoes found preserved in a long-forgotten shipwreck, or even well-worn family shoes hidden behind walls, chimney breasts or in attics to protect inhabitants, footwear is connected to stories of both the living and the long departed. Read as an artifact of material culture, the shoe has an unexpected ability to transform significance and meaning over the course of decades or centuries. One of the many features that makes the study of shoes so fascinating is that the very value of footwear, whether held as a prized commodity of personal adornment or fulfilling the basic function of comfortable walking or laboring, lies in how they molded to the foot of the wearer with use. Of equal interest, once a pair of shoes outlived its useful purpose for the wearer, it could be cut down and pieced for another pair, given away as a gift to a family member or trusted servant, or perhaps preserved as a “concealed shoe,” hidden as talisman to bring good luck to occupants moving into a new house. Whatever the case, the stories are compelling, elucidating the human connection with

an object. Countless shoes end up in museums Use it up, wear it and historical societies, telling new stories once out, make it do, or again. No matter in what condition or where whole shoes or fragments land, the life cycle of do without! a shoe carried with it many subtle nuances and meanings for the user and the finder.Attributed to Today, issues of sustainability, recycling, numerous sources repurposing, with the goal of consuming fewer resources and of lowering our carbon footprint, challenge our obsession with fast fashion. Repurposing shoes is, in fact, something that we share with eighteenth-century shoemakers and their customers. Delving into shoemakers’ account books, we see that one of the constant references is to the repair of shoes: resoling, mending uppers, repairing rips and bindings. Shoemakers often did the same work that today is completed in a shoe repair shop. One wonders if we will see a return to an appreciation of this artisan skill as we think more carefully about the longevity of our clothing. Although the impulses and rationale (high initial outlay for textiles, uneven supply chain versus twenty-first century environmental concerns regarding processing material, shipping & production) behind repair and refurbishment in the eighteenth century was different from our climatic concerns today, there is nonetheless a poetic dialectic occurring between their interest in long-term use and our own.

Eighteenth and nineteenth-century shoes. Courtesy, Warner House, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Textiles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries held their value long after a given style had ceased to be popular. Over and over, we find examples of brocades, damasks, and woolens cut down and made into smaller items: a child’s dress made from a mother’s gown; a woman’s bodice or jumps fashioned from a man’s coat or an earlier dress; a quilted petticoat transformed to bedspread, small bits into quilts, and textiles to shoes, needle cases and any number of smaller belongings. It is not surprising, then, to find the example of her mother’s silk brocade from a 1739 wedding dress refashioned for Deborah Thaxter’s wedding shoes in 1773. When the 21-year-old bride married Capt. James Todd on 18 November 1773, her mother had died few years previously. Her mother, Deborah [Lincoln] Thaxter, was married on 29 November 1739.

The survival of these shoes, created using a “repurposed” silk, most likely held personal significance and meanings not included in the current family record. While the mother’s c. 1730s silk brocade features a rosy peachcolored floral motif at the toes and bold plant forms associated with Rococo textiles, the form of the shoe is in keeping with the changes found in the later eighteenth century: a longer shoe with a pointed toe and much smaller and narrower heel. The decision to employ an approximately 30 year-old textile was clearly of the bride’s choosing. Memory of her mother was carried literally and figuratively into her new life via her new/old shoes.

A different example of repurposing is seen in a pair of rose pink wool baby shoes, held in the collection of Historic Deerfield. These charming infant or toddler’s shoes are of a wool calimanco (also spelled calamanco, callimanco) and date to 1763-68. An 1888 note accompanies the shoes, stating that they were from the Root family of Connecticut, worn by Wealthy Peck Bardwell. Recently conserved, these tiny shoes were comprised of individual pieced fragments, likely from an early textile. The original wool textile may have been part of a blanket or perhaps a woman’s petticoat, now worn and cut into small pieces for Bardwell’s One can learn so much from the way people wore their shoes, altered their shoes, and saved their shoes, and this evidence allows us to explore the dimensions of their everyday lives, adding voices which frequently do not appear in traditional sources. footwear. Before the American Revolution, shoes typically were imported from London, but were treated like commodities, whether custommade or second-hand. However, by the eve of the Revolution, embroidered, brocade or damask silk shoes with high heels became seen as luxury items challenging notions of frugality among Patriot leaders. Indeed, by the 1760s, British Americans had additional reasons to repair and refurbish.

“To wear their old cloaths over again, till they can make new ones”

Benjamin Franklin, February 13, 1766 During the decade leading up to the American Revolution, as trade embargoes and non-intercourse agreements took root, many women opted to have local repairs or updates made to their

Pattern-matched, brocaded silk shoes by London cordwainer, Jonathan Hose, c. 1770. The shoes were held secure by buckles. Hose sent thousands of shoes to British America where they were in high demand. These fine examples are in the collection of Historic New Engand.

An example of a much-altered pair of mid-eighteenth-century shoes that began as heeled silk brocade buckle shoes. Subsequently, several decades later, the heels were cut down, and a series of ‘make do’ repairs are found on the interior and exterior including piecing and an ill-carved insole. Courtesy, The Warner House, Portsmouth, NH. (Photo: author)

footwear. Pointed toes were altered to round, tongues were changed from round to pointed, French heels were reclad with new fabrics. Benjamin Franklin’s testimony before Parliament on February 13, 1766 concerning the sentiments of the American colonists regarding the Stamp Act is one of the more famous moments leading up to the Revolution. The transcript is well known, revealing a polished, eloquent, and direct performance. Franklin’s words made it clear to Parliament that Americans were even ready to forego their purchases of British clothing and shoes.

Throughout New England, there is abundant evidence of repair and remaking of shoes found in the day books of cordwainers such as Samuel Lane in Stratham, NH, Colonel John Welch of Plaistow, NH, the Pope family in Salem, MA, and countless more. This is further born out in the evidence of the shoes themselves. Reviewing New England collections of footwear from the mid-1760s-1780s, there are extant examples which, upon careful examination, reveal repairs and updating. Even after the Revolution, women like Sally Brewster Gerrish had the heels of her Georgian shoes cut down to be more in line with the neoclassical style of low-heeled slippers.

The meanings that footwear held for early New Englanders transcended shoes’ utility or even beauty. Shoes were prized, celebrated, and displayed as markers of fashionable taste and genteel sensibility. New Englanders refreshed, altered, and revamped them, making repairs as long as the leather held together. And, the stories that their shoes could tell—of hopes and dreams, successes and celebrations, losses and disappointments—are revealing. One can learn so much from the way people wore their shoes, altered their shoes, and saved their shoes, and this evidence allows us to explore the dimensions of their everyday lives, adding voices which frequently do not appear in traditional sources.

Kimberly Alexander, Ph.D. is on the faculty of the University of New Hampshire where she teaches museum studies, material culture and American history. She has held curatorial positions at several New England museums, including the MIT Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum and Strawbery Banke. Her most recent book, entitled Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era traces the history of early Anglo-American footwear from the 1740s through the 1790s (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).