Picture a Pilgrim. Chances are you just imagined someone dressed almost entirely in black and white. Black coat. Black dress. White collar. Maybe a tall black hat decorated with a shiny buckle. It’s one of the most recognizable costumes in American history.
There is only one problem: The Pilgrims didn’t actually dress that way.
The people of Plymouth wore color. Blue. Green. Red. Violet. Brown. Gray. And we don’t have to speculate about it. Probate inventories, wills and other seventeenth-century records preserve descriptions of actual clothing owned by people who lived in Plymouth Colony. The real Pilgrim wardrobe was considerably more colorful—and more interesting—than the costume we remember.
Black Wasn’t the Everyday Uniform
The General Society of Mayflower Descendants explains that the popular image of Pilgrims dressed exclusively in black and white is inaccurate. Black clothing existed, of course. But achieving a rich, colorfast black could require expensive dyeing. What seventeenth-century records called “black” could also describe extremely dark shades of other colors.
Everyday clothing came in a range of colors. That immediately changes the visual world of Plymouth. Imagine the settlement not as a monochrome photograph but as a community filled with muted natural colors punctuated by stronger reds, blues, greens and violets. That is much closer to the evidence.
We Know Because They Left Clothing Behind
How can historians possibly know what ordinary people wore four centuries ago? One important source is the probate inventory. When someone died, his or her possessions might be inventoried as part of settling the estate. Those lists sometimes recorded individual garments, fabrics, colors and values.
Wills provide additional clues. These aren’t artists imagining what Pilgrims might have worn. They are legal records describing property people actually owned. Pilgrim Hall Museum’s collections and the Mayflower Society’s research use these documents to reconstruct clothing and daily life. The result is one of history’s wonderful surprises: The supposedly colorless Pilgrims had closets containing plenty of color.
Violet in Plymouth? Absolutely.
The Mayflower Society points to several wonderfully specific examples. William Bradford’s inventory included a violet-colored cloak. Other surviving records document garments in shades including blue, green and red.
These were not necessarily the brilliant synthetic colors available to us today. Seventeenth-century dyes produced different effects depending upon the fiber, dye materials, preparation and repeated dyeing. But the important point remains: Color was normal.
The Pilgrims did not regard colorful clothing as incompatible with serious Christian faith. Their religious convictions influenced ideas about modesty and extravagance, but modest clothing did not automatically mean colorless clothing.
Wool and Linen Did Most of the Work
If the Pilgrims weren’t walking around in black polyester costumes, what were their clothes actually made from? Primarily wool and linen.
Wool was enormously useful. Depending upon how it was spun, woven and finished, it could produce many different kinds of cloth suitable for outer garments and everyday wear. Linen, made from flax, was commonly used for items worn next to the body, including shirts and shifts. The Mayflower Society notes that cotton was known but comparatively rare and expensive.
For a Plymouth family, fabric mattered. Clothing represented labor and money. Garments were expected to last. Fabric could be reused. Clothing could be handed down. A shirt wasn’t disposable fashion. It was property.
Clothing Required an Entire Chain of Labor
Before industrial textile production, a finished garment represented an astonishing amount of work. Fibers had to be produced or obtained. They had to be prepared. Thread had to be spun. Cloth had to be woven. Fabric might be dyed. Then someone had to cut and sew the garment.
That helps explain why clothing appears in wills and estate inventories. A coat wasn’t merely something hanging by the door. It contained valuable material and skilled labor. And color added another layer.
So Where Did the Colors Come From?
Before modern chemical dyes, color came primarily from natural materials and established dyeing traditions. Seventeenth-century textile workers could create a surprising range of colors using plant and other natural dye sources. Cloth might also arrive already dyed through European commercial networks.
This is an area where we should be cautious about claiming that a particular Plymouth garment was dyed from a particular local plant unless documentation establishes it.
But the probate records give us something even more reliable” The finished colors themselves. We know Plymouth residents owned colored garments because their contemporaries recorded them. That’s stronger evidence than trying to reverse-engineer an undocumented dye recipe.
What About Those Famous Buckles?
Here’s another disappointment for the Thanksgiving costume department. The enormous shiny buckles commonly attached to Pilgrim hats are largely a later stereotype. The familiar tall black hat with a prominent buckle became part of the popular visual shorthand for “Pilgrim,” but it should not be treated as an accurate uniform worn by Mayflower passengers in 1620.
Men did wear hats. Women wore various forms of head coverings. But there was no official Pilgrim costume. People dressed as English men, women and children of their social position and period. That distinction matters. The Pilgrims weren’t trying to look historical. They were just wearing clothes.
Children Didn’t Wear Tiny Thanksgiving Costumes Either
Children’s clothing also reflected seventeenth-century English customs rather than our modern expectations. Young children could wear garments that look surprisingly similar regardless of sex by modern standards, while older children increasingly dressed like adults. This is another reminder that clothing communicates culture. What seems obvious to us—what a boy “should” wear, what a girl “should” wear, which colors belong to whom—would not necessarily have seemed obvious to a family in 1620.
Studying clothing therefore gives us more than fashion history. It helps us see another culture on its own terms.
Plymouth Wasn’t Frozen in Time
There is another trap in the way we picture Pilgrim clothing. Plymouth Colony existed for decades. Fashion changed. Trade expanded. People prospered or struggled. New immigrants arrived. Children grew up. Goods circulated through Atlantic trading networks. The clothing of Plymouth in 1650 should not automatically be assumed to look identical to clothing worn aboard the Mayflower in 1620.
When we compress an entire century into a single Thanksgiving costume, we lose the fact that Plymouth was a living society.
Why Does Any of This Matter?
Does it really matter whether William Bradford owned a violet cloak? Yes—because details change how we see people. Once historical figures become stereotypes, they stop feeling human. The Pilgrims become black-and-white cardboard figures standing around a Thanksgiving table rather than people who chose clothing, raised children, cooked dinner, worried about money, repaired worn garments, built homes and occasionally owned something as wonderfully specific as a violet cloak. Historical accuracy restores texture. And sometimes a small correction opens the door to a much larger understanding.
The next time you see the familiar black-hatted Pilgrim, remember: Plymouth wasn’t black and white. It was wool and linen. It was brown and gray. It was blue and green. It was red.
And yes, thanks to William Bradford’s probate inventory, it was even violet. History is usually more colorful than the costume.
For the principal source for the clothing article, please visit the General Society of Mayflower Descendants’ “Dress Like a Pilgrim” resource.
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