by Lynne Bassett
As the costume specialist at the Connecticut Historical Society under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2001-2003, I was responsible for cataloguing the Tory red coat of Munson Hoyt, one of only a few reputed Tory red coats owned in North American museum collections. One of the other such coats was said to belong to the East Hampton Historical Society. Thus it was with particular interest that I examined the Mulford red coat (1940.24.1) when I was invited to catalogue the costume collection here beginning in March of 2007.
Broadcloth - an 18th Century British Textile
I realized immediately that it is a wonderfully preserved eighteenth-century red broadcloth frock coat. Broadcloth was one of the many special wool fabrics that made England's textile industry famous-and the country wealthy-in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, until the production of cotton fabrics took precedence in the nineteenth century.
The wool fabric was woven on a broadloom approximately sixty inches wide. (Men standing on each side of the loom accomplished the weaving by throwing the shuttle back and forth to each other.) The fulling process, during which the fabric was washed and beaten, felted the wool fibers to create a very sturdy cloth. It was so sturdy, in fact, that the edges of garments constructed of wool broadcloth were simply cut and left unfinished because they did not ravel. Dyeing the luxurious red color of the Mulford frock coat was probably accomplished with cochineal, a beetle harvested in Mexico and South America-and the source of much the wealth of the Spanish empire in this period.
Red broadcloth was commonly used for outerwear in the eighteenth century, most notably for the "cardinal," the hooded cloak that inspired the garb of "Little Red Riding Hood."
Men's Fashions - the Peacocok Statement
The Mulford frock coat is indeed a red coat-but it is not a revolutionary era British red coat. Military frock coats of the colonial era generally feature contrasting facings along the opening edges and cuffs; for example, the Hoyt red coat at CHS has blue facings. The Mulford coat does not have any facings-it is entirely red.
That a man would own for everyday wear a coat of such a bright color is surprising to many people today. In fact, eighteenth-century men were peacocks, delighting in elegantly embroidered silk waistcoats and frilled shirts.
Coats of almost any rainbow hue could be worn-green, blue, brown, yellow, maroon, purple, even pink (as seen in a velvet coat worn by Jeremiah Wadsworth in the CHS collection). A red wool frock coat which belonged to Amos King of Massachusetts is now in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg.
The Mulford Coat - Typical of the Period
Like many coats of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the Mulford coat is cut with curved front edges, sloping towards the tails in back. The coat does not fasten with its large, flashy brass buttons, but with two hooks and eyes which bring the edges of the fabric together at mid-chest.
The carefully stitched buttonholes are uncut and purely decorative. Fashionable coats in this period did not button, but were worn open or just barely closed, as in this example, in order to show off the contrasting or colorfully decorated waistcoat. At one and a quarter inches in diameter, the brass buttons boasted the coat owner's fashion sense; such large buttons became the mode in the 1780s.
Other construction details of the Mulford frock coat provide evidence of its creation in the late eighteenth century, after the War for Independence. Along with the strongly sloped front opening, the stand-up turn-down collar is a feature of the incoming neoclassical style.
The narrow sleeves, cut in a curve to remind the gentleman wearer to hold his arms in that desired elegant position, have cuffs no wider than the sleeve itself. Along with the somewhat constricting sleeve, shoulder seams cut towards the back assisted the wearer to stand up straight with his shoulders back and down, to create the fashionably vertical neoclassical silhouette.
Similarly cut coats can be seen in the paintings of Charles Willson Peale; see for example, Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming from 1788, and the portrait of the artist's brother, James Peale Painting a Miniature from about 1795.
An Important Artifact of 18th Century Long Island
In sum, this coat dates to about 1785-1800.
When it entered the East Hampton Historical Society collection in 1951, the red frock coat was said to belong to John Mulford (1606-1686). However, it was soon recognized that the coat did not date that early.
Another theory-put forth most likely just because the coat is red-suggested that it was a British military uniform coat belonging to Colonel David Mulford (1722-1778), though there was no evidence that the colonel held any Loyalist beliefs. In a Historical Society newsletter article from earlier this year, it was speculated that the coat belonged to Samuel Mulford (1644-1725).
In fact, all of these men died too early to have ever worn this coat.
It probably belonged to Colonel David Mulford's son, Major David Mulford (1754-1799). Perhaps it was saved as a relic - the best coat - of this man who died relatively young at age forty-five. Though it does not date as early as previously thought, this red wool coat remains an important artifact of late eighteenth-century life on Long Island - indeed, it is an important artifact of historic American costume in general. That it survives in such excellent condition is a wonderful bonus.
