While some of these milliners may have been shop owners who just sold goods rather than producing them, and others may have focused more on apparel than hats, millinery was a viable profession for women in the nineteenth century. of the newest fashions.” In 1788 Jane Gee announced that she had recently moved her shop to the northeast corner of Second and Chestnut Streets, where she offered “a variety of Millinary ready made” as well as “a quantity of hat and bonnet wires, of the newest fashions.” City directories reveal significant growth of the profession in the early nineteenth century, listing only one milliner in 1800 (as compared to fifty-three male hatters that year), but thirty-nine in 1820 and more than 160 by 1850, almost all women. In 1773 Lydia Whitehead was indentured to Mary Brown “to be taught the trade of bonnet, hat and cloakeing making.” In 1784 Frances Rugge announced in the newspaper that she was a milliner from London who recently opened a shop on Market Street below Water Street “near the wharf,” where she offered a variety of women’s apparel, including “hats, bonnets, etc. Millinery developed more slowly than hat making and remained mostly a small-scale, artisan-based industry, practiced almost exclusively by women. This 1897 trade card advertises one of the city’s numerous small millinery shops. Millinery Evolution The millinery business remained largely artisan-based and practiced primarily by women throughout its history. As in other industries, artisans continued to make hats by hand, but they increasingly competed with factories that produced hats in large quantities. Originally a small operation, with just Fareira and four workmen, the company grew and moved to a four-story building on Lombard Street west of Tenth Street, with a separate finishing shop and store at 25 N. In 1823 John Fareira opened one of the earliest hat factories in Philadelphia at Front and Spruce Streets. This began to change over the course of the nineteenth century, as industrialization brought large-scale, factory-based production to the hat-making industry. Most hatters in this period, like Cresson and Parish, were artisans who made hats by hand in shops in their residences. In 1802, 102 hat-making workshops operated in Philadelphia. Around 1800 hatter Benjamin Cresson (1774-1827) advertised that he had “commenced business at the house formerly occupied by his grandfather, Benjamin Hooton, 14 North Second Street, four doors below Church, where he has for sale an assortment of beaver, castor, roram, and wool hats.” Another hatter in this period, Isaac Parish (1735-1826), had his shop across the street from Cresson, at 17 N. Early Pennsylvania statesman and scholar James Logan (1674-1751), heavily involved in the fur trade, supplied beaver pelts to a number of local hatters in the 1710s and 1720s, while cabinetmaker John Head (1688-1754) made hat blocks for several Philadelphia hatters in the 1740s, including his son John Head Jr.
In 1698, the author of An Account of Pennsylvania and West Jersey noted that “Felt makers will have for their hats seven shillings apiece, such as may be bought in England for two shillings apiece.” Labor was in short supply in America as compared to England, resulting in higher prices for domestically made goods.ĭozens of hat makers worked in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century, as recorded in account books, tax records, and city directories. The first hat makers on record in Philadelphia were John Colley and Anthony Sturgis, each listed as a “hatter and felter” in a 1690 description of businesses in Philadelphia. In early America, hats were generally made of felted beaver fur, although wool, straw, and other animal skins were also used. Millinery also sometimes encompassed making or selling women’s apparel accessories and fabrics. Hat making-for men, done by “hatters”-and millinery-for women, done by “milliners”-were, for the most part, different professions that used different materials and production techniques, although at times they overlapped. Millinery, the making of women’s hats, did not reach the same level of mass production, but also became a longtime viable industry in the region. It was especially robust in the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth century, when Philadelphia was home to dozens of hat factories, including the world’s largest hat manufacturer. Hat making, among the earliest occupations in Philadelphia, grew to be one of the city’s major industries. Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You Back.
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