"With Her Clothes under Her Arms": Clothing, Mobility, and Power in Colonial New England

In 1695 when Candee, an enslaved woman of African descent in Boston, travelled through the streets of the town, a witness described seeing her “with her clothes under her arms.” Candee was on her way to labor for a new household, and her enslaver had come to fetch her and “demanded” her clothes. Likewise, when Robert Gibbs, the son of an Anglo-American merchant went to live with another family in Boston in 1672, his mother recorded a list of items that were “caryed thither for him,” a list including several articles of clothing. In a world where dependents were highly mobile, moving in and out of neighboring households for varying lengths of time, so too were their clothes. Since clothing was expensive in colonial New England and dependents had limited access to it, household heads paid close attention to the quality and condition of their dependents’ clothes. At the same time, dependents gained privileged access to clothing through the labor they performed, as they were often responsible for laundering the household’s clothing as well as proxy shopping and carrying clothing across the community. Capitalizing on their access, dependents sometimes stole clothing, as they could profit from its resale, use it for disguise in running away, or simply claim it for their personal pleasure. Clothing was thus a site of contestation, which explains why New Englanders were so attentive to the flow of clothing within their households and communities. This paper explores the importance of clothing for both dependents and household heads, revealing how clothing was central to the ongoing negotiations over power within colonial America.