Part 1

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THE WIGMAKER in Eighteenth-Century _WILLIAMSBURG_

An Account of his Barbering, Hair-Dressing, & Peruke-Making Services, & some Remarks on Wigs of Various Styles.

_Williamsburg Craft Series_

_WILLIAMSBURG_ Published by _Colonial Williamsburg_ MCMLXXXVII

_The Wigmaker in Eighteenth Century_ Williamsburg

Richard Gamble, barber and perukemaker of Williamsburg in the middle years of the eighteenth century, appears to have remained a bachelor all his life. Other than this he seems to have been no more improvident than the average craftsman of his time. That is to say, he came--or was brought--into court with startling frequency in an endless round of suits to collect unpaid debts.

He was in good company. Going to the law was part of the colonial way of life in Virginia, and everyone from a town's least citizen to the colony's greatest planter engaged in it. In fact, suing and being sued had some of the aspects of a game: the plaintiff in one case might shortly be defendant in another and witness in a third--and keep right on doing business with the other parties in all three cases!

Court records abound with evidence that Williamsburg wigmakers were just as impecunious and as contentious as any of the rest. Mr. Gamble, however, had an additional distinction--of a sort. While most debt cases reached settlement out of court or ended in judgment for the plaintiff, Gamble actually went to jail for debt. In the _Virginia Gazette_ of May 8, 1752, appeared this announcement to the public:

BEING prevented carrying on my Business as usual by an Arrest for a Debt not justly my own. I hereby give Notice, That I have taken into Partnership with me _Edward Charlton_, late from _London_, who will carry on the Business, at my Shop, next Door to the _Raleigh_ Tavern, in _Williamsburg_. Gentlemen, who please to favour us with their Orders for Wigs, &c. may depend on being well and expeditiously serv'd and oblige

Their very humble Servant _Richard Gamble_.

_N. B._ All Persons who are indebted to me, are desired to pay the same to Mr. _Alexander Finnie_, who is properly impowered for that Perpose.

Alexander Finnie, co-defendant with Gamble in at least one large suit for debt--perhaps the one that led to Gamble's "Arrest"--was himself a wigmaker who had abandoned the craft for the arduous pleasures of innkeeping. He was proprietor at the time of the Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg's largest and most famous hostelry.

When Gamble died, Edward Charlton, late from London, succeeded to the business and became in time Williamsburg's leading barber and wigmaker. His livelihood--as perhaps he foresaw--was already doomed when he retired from business shortly before the Revolution: the wig fashion was on the way out in England and would soon be dropped in America. And in any case his former clientele would vanish from the streets of Williamsburg when the capital of Virginia was moved to Richmond in 1780.

Charlton, Gamble, and Finnie were only three of some thirty men concerned with barbering and wigmaking in eighteenth-century Williamsburg. Once or twice between 1700 and 1780 the town apparently had to struggle along for short periods with but a single active practitioner of the craft. Usually there were at least two or three, and for a time in 1769 as many as eight plied their trade in the little capital city.

About some of these thirty or more men we know nothing today except their names. About others quite a few facts survive in one place or another, chiefly the records of the York County Court and the columns of the _Virginia Gazette_. In addition, Edward Charlton's account book of sales made and payments received during the years 1769 to about 1775 (there are some later entries) was found in the attic of a Williamsburg home only a few years ago. It helps immensely to round out our knowledge of his craft and clientele, and makes him almost inevitably the "representative" of his fellows in this account.

All of these Williamsburg barbers and perukemakers performed at least one, but not always all three, of the craft's basic services: (1) making, selling, and dressing wigs and false hair pieces for men and women; (2) cutting and dressing men's, women's, and children's natural hair; and (3) shaving men. Before we go into more detail on these aspects of the craft in colonial days, however, it may be well to peer briefly still further back into history.

_BEARDS, WIGS, AND HISTORY_

The trouble with hair is that it persists in growing, and every once in a while something must be done about it. Over the millenia since time began--or at least since people began--that "something" has been manifold in variety: dyeing, bleaching, oiling, powdering, pomading, trimming, curling, straightening, shaving off completely, or augmenting with hair from horses, cows, goats, and from other human heads.

Shaving the face was not customary among the ancient Greeks until Alexander the Great ordered his soldiers to doff their beards lest the enemy use them as a convenient handle in close combat. Thereupon the Grecian tonsorial parlor, known as a _tonstrina_, added shaving to its previous services of trimming and dressing the hair and beard, massage, first aid, and minor surgery.

Roman barbers (the word comes from the Latin _barba_ for beard) followed the example of their Greek colleagues when the beard passed out of favor during the Republic. The classic reply of the Roman general Archelaus rings true even today: asked by a talkative barber how he would like to be trimmed, Archelaus answered, according to Plutarch, "In silence."

From the onslaught of the barbarians (a word that comes not from _barba_, but from the Greek _barbaros_, meaning strange or rude) until about the thirteenth century, the craft of barbering probably reverted in most of Europe to its elementary procedures of trimming and dressing the hair and beard. In the latter century the first guilds of barbers were formed in both France and England, and by the seventeenth century the golden age of the barber had begun.

For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe an inordinate emphasis on appearance led to excesses of fashion in both costume and hairdress. Men followed the vagaries of high fashion as faithfully as women, and vied with each other in wearing long curls of their own or somebody else's hair.

The wearing of wigs, at least for special purposes, was of ancient origin. Wigs have been found on Egyptian mummies; Greek actors wore wigs on stage; fashionable ladies of Rome and Carthage were much addicted to false hair--especially golden locks from Teuton heads. But the widespread wearing of perukes as an everyday article of costume is generally held to date from 1624, when Louis XIII adopted the usage.

Here it needs to be said, perhaps, that "wig" and "peruke" are not different styles but different forms of the same word. The French _perruque_, spelled _peruke_ in England and the colonies, had gone through an earlier series of English transformations: from _perwyke_ to _perewyk_ to _periwig_, and then by abbreviation to _wig_.

Although Louis XIV disdained wigs until his abundant natural hair began to fall out, the fashion flourished at his court and was brought over to England by the restored Charles II, who began in 1663 to affect a large black wig. Charles may have been the first English king to adopt the custom, but it is said that Elizabeth I owned some 80 auburn, orange, and gold wigs to cover her thinning hair.

Just as Louis XIII's courtiers hastened to don wigs as soon as their monarch did, so aspiring ladies and gentlemen of Restoration England emulated their king. Samuel Pepys recorded that his wife first acquired "a pair of peruques of hair, as the fashion now is for ladies to wear; which are pretty, and are of my wife's own hair, or else I should not endure them." Then, after great hesitation, he bought a "periwigg" for himself and had his hair cut off and made into another.

Pepys's final word on the subject was to wonder "what will be the fashion after the plague is done, as to periwiggs, for nobody will dare to buy any haire, for fear of the infection, that it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague." He need not have been concerned on that score; the fashion throve better after the plague than before, attaining its greatest development under Queen Anne, when the long curls of men's full-bottomed wigs covered the back and shoulders and floated down over the chest. In France, according to Diderot's _Encyclopedia_ (published 1751-1772), late seventeenth-century _perruques_ were so long and so much adorned that they commonly weighed as much as two pounds and cost more than 1,000 _ecus_ (silver coins about the size of a dollar).

Milady's hairdress reached even more preposterous extremes in the many-tiered and bejewelled "fontanges" of Louis XIV's court (an exaggeration he disapproved in vain) about 1700. After a period of some moderation the style reappeared in the yard-high "heads" dictated to fashion by Marie Antoinette before she lost hers. If English and colonial women did not go to the extreme, they nevertheless followed the style. A letter to the New York _Journal or General Advertiser_ in 1767 complained that "it is now the Mode to make the Lady's Head of twice the natural Size, by means of artificial Pads, Boulsters, or Rolls" which--the writer had on good authority--came from hospital patients dead of the smallpox and of "a Distemper still more disagreeable."

_WIG SHOPS IN WILLIAMSBURG_

The shop that Richard Gamble entrusted to his new partner in 1752 stood next door to the Raleigh Tavern, in what was sometimes called "the most public part of the city." Certainly no better location in Williamsburg could have been found for a barber shop than on the Duke of Gloucester Street in the block nearest the Capitol.

The broad main street of Williamsburg, muddy or dusty as the season decreed, stretched westward from the Capitol nearly a mile to the College of William and Mary. During most of the year it saw only the normal activity of a small colonial town. But several times each year--when the courts and perhaps the Assembly met--the town's population doubled or tripled. These "Publick Times" were almost field days of litigation, commercial negotiation, and merrymaking. Then it was that innkeepers and craftsmen lucky enough to have located in that first block knew how fortunate they were.

One small shop also near the Raleigh had been a barbering and wigmaking establishment at least since John Peter Wagnon bought it in 1734. It remained so through the long ownership of Wagnon's one-time apprentice, Andrew Anderson, and the short occupancy of two successor barbers and wigmakers, William Peake of Yorktown and James Currie. Across the street from the Raleigh had stood the shop of Jean Pasteur, one of Williamsburg's first known wigmakers. Somewhere nearby Alexander Finnie made wigs before moving to the Raleigh itself, and Anthony Geohegan did so later--perhaps in the same shop.

A little farther uptown William Peake had briefly set up business as a barber in Mr. Dunn's Crown Tavern, opposite the printing office. James Nichols first opened his shop in "the corner room of the brick house where Mrs. Singleton lives"--now better known as the Brick House Tavern. And somewhere along the same crowded street Richard Charlton (who was somehow related to Edward and had at least a passing acquaintance with wigmaking) kept his well-patronized tavern.

Other craftsmen also located in the same neighborhood. Not far beyond the Raleigh hung the sign of James Craig's jewelry, watch, and silversmith shop, the Golden Ball. And next to it was the millinery store of the sisters Margaret and Jane Hunter--the latter of whom married her neighbor Edward Charlton.

The size of Edward Charlton's barber and wig shop is now unknown. For some time it was probably no larger than a front room of the house he owned opposite the Raleigh. Andrew Anderson's shop was in a building sixteen feet square. The barber shop next to the King's Arms Tavern is shown on later insurance papers to have been sixteen by twenty feet--and these are the approximate dimensions of the restored barber and perukemaker's shop.

_MASTERS, SERVANTS, AND MATERIALS_

In such a small shop it seems unlikely that even a leading wigmaker could have had very many helpers. But Edward Charlton at one time had four apprentices and journeymen, and one of his contemporaries, Robert Lyon, in the space of two years had five known bond servants, at least three identified as barber-wigmakers.

Apprenticeship to a master barber and perukemaker was the normal--in fact the only--way for a boy to learn the trade. The Williamsburg wigmakers presumably all entered the craft in this manner, though Andrew Anderson is the only one about whom the record is clear. Presumably, too, most of them had apprentices in turn; but here the surviving information is quite skimpy.

Journeymen (craftsmen who had finished their apprentice training but had not yet gone into business as their own masters) were in good demand and apparently in good supply. Alexander Finnie gave notice in a 1745 issue of the _Virginia Gazette_ that he was "in want of Two or Three Journeymen, that understand the Business of a Barber and Peruke-maker," and promised any who applied "good Encouragement." The response to this ad was prompt, for the very next issue of the _Gazette_ contained this notice by the master barber and wigmaker whose shop was directly across the street from Finnie's:

_Whereas my honest Neighhour, that has advertis'd for Two or Three Journeymen, has lately seduced One from my Service, in a clandestine and undermining Manner; which I am well persuaded, that no Man but one of his Principles would have done: Therefore it's to be hoped, that one of the Number he has advertised for, will come into my Service, in Lieu of him who has been so villanously cajol'd as above, who may depend on having good Encouragement, from_

Andrew Anderson.

Whether Anderson lured anyone into his employ by this ad does not appear. But Finnie a year later announced that he had just imported from London a shipment of wigmaking materials and also "some exceeding good Workmen." With what has the ring of smug satisfaction he concluded: "As I have a great many good Workmen, Gentlemen and others may depend on being speedily and faithfully served, in the best Manner."

Finnie's mention of imported materials was typical. Time and again the announcements of Williamsburg wigmakers contain phrases such as "Just arrived, a choice Parcel of Hairs, prepared by the best Hands in London," or "A Fresh Cargoe of live human Hairs, already curl'd and well prepared." By far the larger portion of hair used in Williamsburg-made wigs was imported from England, either by the perukemaker himself or by colonial hair merchants.

According to Diderot's _Encyclopedia_, hair from regions such as Flanders, where beer and cider were the common beverages, made superior wigs; women's hair was better than men's; country women's better than city women's; and chestnut was the most desirable color--except that white wigs should be made of hair that once had been black. Furthermore, avowed the same authority, "In general the hair of persons not given to excesses lasts a long time, while that of men who live in sexual debauchery, or of women who give themselves to the uses of men, has less sap, dries out, and loses its quality."

If colonial wigmakers were aware of this dictum--which seems unlikely--they paid it no attention, buying hair from abroad with never a query as to the personal habits of the original wearers, and showing similar indifference in purchasing local locks:

THE subscriber proposes purchasing Hair for Wigs, and hopes he will soon be able to supply wigmakers with that article, of different kinds. He is in want of a quantity of human hair, both long and short, of any colour, for which he will give one shilling per ounce, or more, according to the quality. Apply to Mr. _James Nichols_, barber in _Williamsburg_, who will receive it and pay the money, or to me in _Petersburg_.

George Long.

_COLONIAL CLIENTELE_

A few of the Williamsburg barbers and perukemakers advertised their readiness to dress ladies' hair, and Charlton regularly made "curls" for his customers' wives. But most seem to have confined themselves wholly--or almost so--to barbering and bewigging male clients.

These clients were either town dwellers or members of the plantation gentry, who were the colony's economic, political, and social elite. Of every hundred Virginians, eighty or more were small farmers or farm workers and did not own wigs. Devereaux Jarratt, the son of a poor but industrious farmer near Williamsburg, recalled later in life in his memoirs:

A _periwig_, in those days, was a distinguishing badge of _gentle folk_--and when I saw a man riding the road, near our house, with a wig on, it would so alarm my fears, and give me such a disagreeable feeling, that, I dare say, I would run off, as for my life.

And an anonymous traveler of the 1740s observed that in Maryland:

'Tis an odd Sight, that except some of the very elevated Sort, few Persons wear Perukes, so that you would imagine they were all sick, or going to bed: Common People wear Woollen and Yarn Caps; but the better ones wear white Holland or Cotton: Thus they travel fifty Miles from Home. It may be cooler, for ought I know; but, methinks, 'tis very ridiculous.

Perhaps on the frontier men allowed their beards to go unshorn. In the settled areas and towns, however, only a clean-shaven face was acceptable to the fashion that simultaneously demanded false hair on the head. Most men probably shaved themselves, and some, like Councillor Robert Carter and Dr. John Sequeira, had slaves trained to do their barbering. Of the rest a goodly number visited Charlton's shop almost daily and paid him an annual fee for "shaving and dressing." We do not know if this meant shaving the face or the head or both; "dressing," of course, normally referred to care of the wig.

Some among Charlton's regular customers for shaving and dressing, however, never bought a wig from him. Either they imported their own directly from a maker like Thomas Clendinning of Glasgow, or else they wore no wig. To defy fashion in this second manner must have taken some courage, for the wig was an important badge of social rank, particularly among the upper and would-be upper classes.

But it was not an infallible one. Negro slaves may sometimes have been decked out in white wigs: those who were the liveried house slaves, coachmen, and the like, of the ostentatiously rich planters. On the other hand, such a well-to-do and fashion-conscious man as George Washington seems from portraits and other records to have worn no wig at all, though he kept his own hair well powdered and curled. In the lesser ranks craftsmen, indentured servants, and apprentices sometimes did and sometimes did not wear wigs.

Washington, who often lodged when in Williamsburg at the tavern of Richard Charlton, was not among Edward Charlton's customers for any barbering service. Peyton Randolph, however, the speaker of the House of Burgesses, was an excellent patron. He bought two brown dress bob wigs every year, and each December paid for a year's shaving and dressing. John Randolph, the attorney general, was another regular customer, who paid nothing for several years, then settled his large bill partly in "cash," partly by "the pardon of a Negro," and partly with some horses.

The cash receipts that Charlton entered in his accounts may in rare instances have included clinking money. But the colonies were forbidden to mint their own, and coin of the realm was exceedingly scarce. So Charlton's income was largely paper currency of one kind or another: perhaps Virginia currency printed by William Hunter at the printing office on Duke of Gloucester Street years before; perhaps bills of exchange on a London merchant; most likely warehouse receipts for varying amounts of stored tobacco--these being a form of legal tender universally acceptable in the tobacco colonies.

Robert Carter Nicholas, treasurer of the colony, Thomas Everard, mayor of Williamsburg, George Mason of Gunston Hall, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Wythe, professor of law at the College, and Wythe's former student, the youthful Thomas Jefferson, all visited Charlton's shop more or less faithfully. Jefferson, experimenting as usual, first bought a brown dress queue wig and then a brown tie wig before he settled on the brown dress bob that was the prevailing style.

Another of Charlton's famous patrons, "Mr Patrick Hanrey Esq^re," bought only one peruke of him in the half-dozen years of the account book. He brought it back once for alteration, but never for dressing. Perhaps this was the brown wig that one contemporary remembered "exhibited no indication of great care in the dressing." Another acquaintance recalled, however, that "at the bar of the General Court, [Henry] always appeared in full suit of black cloth or velvet, and a tye wig, which was dressed and powdered in the highest style."