"Unfiroms for the 4th va, Grayson's and Patton's regiment." Topic

I'm struggling to find anything for these regiments. I've check Mollo but to no avail. Any help would be great!

Greetings,

I can share a little information from Charles M. Lefferts' "Uniforms of the American, British, French and German Armies of the American Revolution." Lefferts' book has a section devoted to deserter descriptions from newspapers of the time. People have debated whether these small pieces of information really reflect what a unit looked like, so you might want to give that some consideration yourself.

Having said that, here goes:

Colonel William Grayson's Regiment
Captain Nathaniel Mitchell's Company

Blue coat.
Hat with silver button and loop, white hunting shirt, brown spotted velveret jacket, leggings.

Colonel John Patton's Regiment of Foot Guards [!]
Captain Joseph Prowell's Company

Short brown jacket, leather breeches, small round hat.
Blue trousers, short jacket, round hat.
Cloth colored jacket, buckskin breeches, white woolen stocking, felt hat.

Fourth Regiment of the Virginia Line
Captain John Peyton's Company

Light blue drab coat with pale blue facings, green vest, linen overalls (same worn by two deserters).

I'm sorry I can't offer you more substantial, but it's something. There has been at least one recent TMP discussion about American AWI uniforms, concerning Philip Katcher's "Uniforms of the Continental Army", a book I used to own. So there are other resources out there which might have what you need.

Jeff

While it is certainly true that some information beats NO information, there is a real danger in generalizing from limited data. Deserter descriptions are an obvious case in point; we assume the guy who ran away was dressed the same as the ones who stayed? And who says everyone was dressed alike to begin with? Brown spotted velveret jacket?

And there are plenty of instances when different companies were dressed differently within a regiment, even when the clothing was provided by the same supplier (e.g. several Virginia units).

Yes, if a regiment got 300 coats from France, blue faced white or whatever, that would be uniform for a while, though I'd bet there'd be variety in hats and pants and whatnot. But a year later? No way.

In other words, have fun researching and apply any info you find to painting SOME of your figures. But if you want troops to look anything like what the reality must have been, give up any idea of uniformity.

On a general point, Katcher is an order of magnitude better than Lefferts, as the former tends to work with multiple deserter descriptions rather than just one. This often reveals common items of clothing more likely than not to be the regimental uniform – that said, quite often even these men are wearing blue or brown garments (coats, surtouts, jackets) that could just as easily be the civilian clothing they had on when they joined, as they were very common colours.

You also need to specify the years you are looking for, as many Continental units – certainly prior to the last 2-3 years of the war – had a different uniform each year or, in some years, none at all; or else they were not issued anything until the "campaign season" was over. Bear in mind also that the Additional Regiments were usually clothed from the central Continental stores, and hence wore whatever had been procured in that year.

FWIW, Katcher has the following:-

4th VA Regt of 1775-80 – no idea of colours, but from Jan to Sep 77 they were issued with small numbers of coats (29) and dyed hunting shirts faced red (82); these numbers suggest (no more than that) that the NCOs might have been uniformed (most likely Sgts in coats, Cpls in h/s), both as a perk of their rank and to make them identifiable in camp/combat. Around 350 coats were issued post-Brandywine, but again, no colour/facings.

Grayson's Additional Regt – in May 77, two out of three deserters wore white hunting shirts; the latter were not normal civilian attire, so quite likely indicative of a uniform of sorts. [Zlatich – Osprey MAA 273 – suggests blue coats faced red.]

Patton's Additional Regt – Katcher has nothing beyond most deserters seemed to be wearing jackets, albeit of different colours (blue, brown and "stone" which probably meant undyed) and round hats. [Zlatich says nothing has been found for this regiment at all.]

Yeah sorry, should of said. Looking at Brandywine.

Thanks for the informAtion so far. Although a pain in the area, I do fine the American uniforms fascinating!

Thanks for helping out, Supercilous. I was a little embarrassed at offering shreds of information, but it was all I had. Now if I'd kept my copy of Katcher's book . . .

I believe thats the danger of the much vaunted Mollo book. They take ONE desert description,and apply it to a entire regiment. Case in point,the one plate with the guy with the peach colored trousers. I saw someone paint up a whole unit as such! When you're talking about British units,thats fine,but there was a WIDE disparity among most Continental units.

Bob

Bob,

I think part of the problem was that there was so little around when they wrote it – they pretty much rely on Lefferts for the Americans, Germans and French, and CCP Lawson for the British, and consequently copy all of those authors' errors and misinterpretations. With far less excuse, the Kiley/Smith book does pretty much the same unfortunately.

And I know exactly what you mean about the peach trousers – seen that unit replicated in so many armies in various scales and sizes over the years!