Tressed for Success: Male Hair Care and Wig Hair Curlers at George Washington’s Childhood Home

Introduction to Focused Issue: History of Textiles and Fashion

“…The author, Laura J. Galke (2018), began her research with the excavation of numerous ceramic curlers for men's wigs at George Washington's childhood home in Stafford County, VA. She delved into related 18th-century primary sources including wills, inventories, account books, newspapers, diaries, letters, maps, wig tools, period engravings, hairdressing treatises, and portraits. She read extensively in secondary sources on the fashion for wigs in colonial British America.…”

“…For this study, the Chicago style with footnotes allowed the author to support her argument that the Washington family:engaged in a home-based program of wig care that constituted a seminal strategy for expressing their pride of place within colonial Virginia society and their membership within the British empire dependent on the intensive labor of enslaved or servant-class members of the household. (Galke, 2018, p. 89)…”