The Last Mantuamaker: Craft Tradition and Commercial Change in Boston, 1760-1840

In 1845, after almost a dozen years in business as a Boston mantuamaker, Rebecca Goodwin Major closed up shop. Of the thousands of women who had made clothing for women over the city's two-hundred-year history, she was the very last to call herself a mantuamaker in the pages of the city directory, as the term dressmaker took hold. That semantic event offers a point of departure from which to explore both continuity and change among urban artisans; Ithis study considers some 640 Boston women who identified themselves as mantuamakers or dressmakers in the pages of the city directory between 1789 (the first year a directory appeared) and 1845 (the last year the term mantuamaker appears in that source), as well as a handful of other women known mainly from newspapers, tax records, and indentures. Using this date to explore relationships among aspiring and practicing craftswomen; networks grounded in family; geographies large and small; and the larger world of women active in commercial Boston, the study sketches the changing shape of this trade among Boston women.