1863 New England Women's Auxiliary Association Shirt
As America began a third year of Civil War, there was an exceptional need to continue providing hospital clothing to United States soldiers suffering from wounds and disease. Thousands of shirts were produced by volunteer sewists associated with the U.S. Sanitary Commission (USSC), but there were still supply challenges. Early in the war, the USSC had largely placed a reliance on volunteers sewing cotton shirts that had hospital specific features such as tie closures, bed gown lengths, and openings for accessibility to wounds. If additional warmth was needed in a hospital setting, undershirts that were usually made of wool could be worn beneath cotton shirts.
While practical for hospital settings, these garments were not adaptable to the fluid conditions encountered by USSC associated volunteers in the field. To better comfort United States soldiers in a variety of environments, regional branches of the USSC began adapting hospital garment patterns. By 1862, a few variations of cotton shirts were being manufactured by soldiers’ aid groups with buttons instead of ties—and some branch organizations began piloting wool shirts. These adapted patterns were well-meant but contributed to supply issues as home front aid societies, based on their geographic location, could be limited by what patterns, specifications, and fabrics were available.
In April of 1863, the New England Women’s Auxiliary Association (NEWAA) experimented with how to ease shirt distribution challenges by publishing specifications for a singular shirt pattern that could be manufactured out of either wool flannel or varieties of cotton fabric. Based largely on the design of an earlier USSC cotton shirt pattern variation that had wide distribution, this garment was designed to utilize the experience and supplies of essentially any sewing circle in the New England states of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
This experimental shirt featured buttons instead of ties but was somewhat awkward to wear in that it had a wide cut body to fit most soldier sizes, a large sized neck, no cuffs, and it opened all the way down the front to provide potential access to wounds, if necessary. While this was an incredibly versatile garment, it lacked the styling and comfort of another shirt simultaneously piloted by the NEWAA which was wool-only with a placket style front. It was eventually phased out of production during the summer of 1864, when the USSC began nationally distributing patterns for specific cotton-only and wool-only shirts. Although this experimental versatile shirt had a short lifespan, it contributed to the hundreds of thousands of shirts provided to United States soldiers suffering at hospitals, camps, and on the march in primarily the Eastern Theater.
The 1863 New England Women’s Auxiliary Association shirt offered by Civil War Patterns is based directly from the original pattern and specifications. This pattern is offered both in its original size of a 42 chest (sizes 36 to 42 would be one size, similar to U.S. issue military shirts) and in larger sizes graded through historical methods.
Construction of this pattern would have depended on what technology was available to volunteer sewists. It is likely that both hand-sewn and machine-sewn shirts were represented in NEWAA shirts distributed to soldiers.
The original specifications for this shirt pattern call for it to be manufactured out of wool flannel, cotton canton flannel, or cotton (likely muslin or sheeting, that was bleached or unbleached). If manufacturing a reproduction of this garment of wool flannel, the typical colors for USSC wool garments tended to be red, natural (white), or gray.
While the specific button type was not detailed in the original pattern, it appears from other period Sanitary Commission shirt documents, that ½” natural colored bone or “blackened” four-hole bone may have been used for this garment. Additionally, four-hole white glass/China buttons were common on period shirts and could have also been used in the manufacturing of a cotton shirt of this pattern.
As this shirt was made on the home front utilizing a wide range of sewing skill levels, this garment is an ideal candidate for being replicated by home sewists with little to moderate sewing experience, by using our digital pattern with extensive instructions.