Ideas Thanksgiving: Stereotypes and Accurate Puritans/Pilgrims Costuming

The good news is that you don’t have to wear those horribly unattractive black and white Puritan clothes for Thanksgiving anymore (hurray!). The black-and-white stereotype actually got its start back in the early 1800’s when the lost manuscript, Of Plimoth Plantation resurfaced in England (it was lost to the British during the American Revolution).

When Americans got the manuscript back, it naturally led to heightened curiosity about the 1621 fall feast, and about Puritans. Unfortunately, the earliest portraits of American Puritans were those from the late 1600’s, or the time of the Salem Witch Trials, when black-and-white attire was fashionable for Sunday wear.

Up until that approximate time period black fabric had only been affordable to the upper classes, and portraitures had not been a survival priority. But by the late 1600’s the middle classes were able to afford making their “Sunday Best” clothes out of black fabric, and to have their portraits done. And of course they always wore their Sunday Best for their portraits.