Post by spence on Apr 24, 2021 10:13:30 GMT -7
I’ve only been to one juried event, the longhunters Frolic at Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky, 1999. My good friend Chuck and I had a grand time, for me, at least, our best ever event. The judging of our kits was casual and helpful, but the wool blanket I had, white with colored stripes, was flunked, deemed to be too late for the time frame of the Frolic. It was accepted dogma at the time, probably still is, that white blankets with red, yellow, blue and green stripes were ca 1820-1830 at the earliest.
Quite a few years later I found a reference which indicated the blankets were on the scene at least in some places much earlier than that. It’s from the Hudson’s Bay Company archives in Winnipeg. This letter is on microfilm and it is located in HBCA Reel 28 - A5/4.
London Correspondence: from Hudson's Bay House 18 January 1798
to: Thomas Empsom (Empsom owned a blanket factory in Witney,
Oxfordshire) an order for Blanketting, Duffle and Point Blankets which
concludes, "... plus 30 pair of 3 points to be striped with four colours
red, blue, green, yellow) according to your judgement.”
As is not unusual in doing this kind of research, other sources give a different date, in this instance a much earlier one. The Canadian Encyclopedia says this took place at the suggestion by a fur trader, Germain Maugenest, made during a job interview in 1779, and that the above order to Empsom in Whitney was placed one month later. So, last quarter of the 18th century, for sure, not second quarter of the 19th.
The blanket I have was made by Orr Felt and Blanket Co., Piqua, Ohio, ca 1940. It's all wool, quite heavy and thick. I got it at a yard sale for a few bucks.
Spence
Quite a few years later I found a reference which indicated the blankets were on the scene at least in some places much earlier than that. It’s from the Hudson’s Bay Company archives in Winnipeg. This letter is on microfilm and it is located in HBCA Reel 28 - A5/4.
London Correspondence: from Hudson's Bay House 18 January 1798
to: Thomas Empsom (Empsom owned a blanket factory in Witney,
Oxfordshire) an order for Blanketting, Duffle and Point Blankets which
concludes, "... plus 30 pair of 3 points to be striped with four colours
red, blue, green, yellow) according to your judgement.”
As is not unusual in doing this kind of research, other sources give a different date, in this instance a much earlier one. The Canadian Encyclopedia says this took place at the suggestion by a fur trader, Germain Maugenest, made during a job interview in 1779, and that the above order to Empsom in Whitney was placed one month later. So, last quarter of the 18th century, for sure, not second quarter of the 19th.
The blanket I have was made by Orr Felt and Blanket Co., Piqua, Ohio, ca 1940. It's all wool, quite heavy and thick. I got it at a yard sale for a few bucks.
Spence
