Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

Clintonville Clothes in Wartime

TRYING TO LOOK PRETTY is the name of this piece.

A good many years ago a Dale County woman, Mary Love Edwards Fleming, who was a teenager during the Civil War, wrote a long and vivid account of living conditions in this part of Alabama during her youth-- a time she calls “those years of toil and struggle.”

Recently the local Pea River Historical and Genealogical Society began reprinting installments of Mrs. Fleming’s “Reminiscences” in the society’s journal. See what you think of the following paragraphs, taken from the Fall 1979 issue of the Pea River journal:

“The first cornshuck hats that I ever saw were worn by some girls who lived at Clintonville. (A community north of Enterprise on Hwy. 51.) ...A party of these girls came to our church (in a wagon), and nearly all of them wore hats made of the fine, soft part of corn shucks that had been bleached and braided. Very pretty and attractive those girls looked in their homespun dresses and shuck hats. Some of the girls in our neighborhood followed this Clintonville fashion...

“We all tried to excel in having pretty dresses. Pretty muslins for summer wear were made by spinning the thread fine and weaving it ‘single weighed’, as it was called, and by beating the wool lightly.

“Sometimes bright colored cloth was picked to pieces and bits of it used to put dots and figures in the cloth. These dots were made in the weaving by carrying the thread through the harness and sleigh in a certain way and by bearing down on the treadles... The effect was very pretty...

“The style most used in making dresses was the ‘parade or French waist,’ as it is now called (a yoke waist), and a full plain skirt. Ruffles were not so much worn during the war as before, for cloth was too scarce... We had no ribbons or laces except those bought before the war...

“Dyes used in coloring our cloth were obtained mostly from the barks of trees, and the dye was ‘set’ with copperas rock, which was found in the beds of creeks...

“My aunts...were regular dressmakers during those years of toil and struggle. They were really tailors, too... People came from far and near to get them to make uniform coats for the soldiers...

“My aunts made pretty Quaker bonnets for sale. The tops of these were made of bulrushes, a kind of long slender bladed grass, which was bleached and then braided or woven. The crown, the skirt, and the inside lining were made of pretty. muslin berege, or of some other suitable goods available -- usually parts of discarded dresses or remnants of goods used in better days. These were our visiting bonnets, for we could not afford to wear our hats on all occasions.

“There were tanyards throughout the country where cowhides and horsehides and calfskins were tanned; and the shoemakers, usually old or crippled men, made the leather into shoes for the people.

“We thought that we were very fortunate if we could get shoes for best wear made of calf or goat skin. But most of the shoes were made of...cow and horsehides. The latter happened to stretch and was very ugly...

“Once mother sent some goatskin leather to a workman five miles away to have a fine pair of shoes made for me... They were so fine and pretty that you may be sure I was very proud of them... Mother sometimes made shoes of cloth for dress wear...

“Often the soles of fine old shoes were used after the tops had been ripped off, and the new cloth tops were then sewed to the soles with the wrong side out and then turned...”

What do you think?

What would those pretty and attractive girls from Clintonville think if they could rise up out of their graves, get in their wagon, and come over to Fort Rucker and take a look at the tight jeans, floppy T-shirts, and other saggy-haggy clothes many of us are wearing!

What would those poor war time mothers who had to scrimp and save, and “bear down on the treadles”, and make over old clothes and old shoes, say if they could come back and talk to those of us who don’t even know what the “harness and sleigh” of a loom is, much less how to make dyes from tree bark and hats from bulrushes and corn shucks!

Off hand, I would say that these girls and these mothers would be dismayed --and shocked -- at our casual manner of dress.

They would say, “You ladies must not care how you look! Look at all the beautiful dress goods in your stores -- cloth of every kind and color, braids and laces and buttons and ribbons, the newest patterns, and sewing machines! We didn’t have sewing machines!”

They would shake their heads and murmur, “It must be that you’re not trying to look pretty!”

I know that if those girls and ladies walked into our church and saw women and girls sitting there in pantsuits, they would faint dead away and fall back into their graves!

Why don’t we spend a bit more effort trying to look pretty!

Published March 1980. Click your browser’s ‘Back’ button to return.