Hunting Shirts

An extremely plain hunting shirt made c.1800 in Greene Co., Pa., very near the childhood home of pioneer chronicler Joseph Doddridge. Note the narrow collar or cape and the small amount of fringe. Button holes on the cuffs show it wasn't for lack of buttons that the open front doesn't include them.

Daniel Boone, in an engraved copy of a lost 1819 Chester Harding portrait, wears a blue hunting shirt with a large collar resembling lapels.

Col. Daniel Morgan as he might have looked at the surrender of General Burgoyne in 1777. Morgan wears a loose, relatively short, fringed hunting shirt with a small square double cape or collar. He also wears fringed trousers. Although painted in 1821, John Trumbull's depiction of Morgan is probably accurate because he saw Morgan's men in Cambridge in 1775 and commented on the riflemen's clothing.

Shawnee chief Col. John Lewis in 1825. He wears a caped hunting shirt that appears not to open in front. This rare slip-on style required a front and a back piece, taking more time and effort to make, and denying access to the bosom as a place for storing things.

Cherokee warrior Hop Frog wears a hunting shirt with a collar similar to Boone's.

Delaware Indian chief and army scout Black Beaver in 1850. He wears a caped and buttonless Indian hunting coat (called hunting shirt by whites) over a dark calico shirt. His legs are covered to the upper thigh by Indian leggings, and his feet by moccasins. With his European style hair, he seems the very image of a long hunter forced to get most of his clothing from the woods.

Trumbull's fanciful 1787 depiction of riflemen at the death of General Montgomery on the Quebec campaign. Their hunting shirts do not come to the middle thigh as he says they did when he saw them in 1775. And they are wearing fringed trousers in the Canadian cold. After marching through the Maine wilderness their legs would most likely have been covered with woolen leggings called "Indian boots."

A short hunting shirt from the Revolutionary era. According to Joseph Doddridge of western Pennsylvania, some hunting shirts were so short the belt that held the bosom together also supported a breech clout and strings for Indian leggings, "leaving the upper part of the thighs and part of the hips naked." This warm weather shirt is made of white linen. In cooler weather hunting shirts were made of more substantial cloth and almost reached to the knees.

Copy and images from the Mitchell Farish, an employee of the University of Virginia, in his section on clothing where you can find more information on the hunting shirt.