"Officer pants and shirts in Upper Canada" Topic

I seem to recall reading somewhere that officer pants where cream colour where as the regular units where white. Also did the officers wear the knee high pants or full length pants at the time, or both?

As for the white shirts underneath the coat was it a white shirt with frills? The friller the better?

The general rule is that the further you are from the flagpole, the less influence the uniform regulations have. For Upper Canada, you're talking maybe three months from the Horse Guards, and even in the Peninsula, officers had quite a bit of leeway. Do it to suit yourself.

The official issue was white breeches for officers whether regular or militia. Exceptions were regiments with buff facings who wore buff coloured breeches and specialists such as the Glengarry Light Infantry and the Canadian Voltigeurs who had green as the regulation colour.

However, the British officer being the British officer there were variations. Long white trousers (the British wear trousers not pants) the same as the rank and file were popular. Also, grey trousers, sometimes with leather reinforcement were widely worn, especially by mounted officers. Even blue breeches were not unknown.

For officers, shirts were a very private matter and purchase. They tended to be white. The amount of frills would depend on how much of a 'beau' the individual officer was.

Hope that helps.

There was considerable use of blue trousers for enlisted men of Canadian militia formations, so their officers may well have followed suit on campaign. For the regulars, you have to bear in mind that the War of 1812 fell in the period of transition from uniform regulations that had been in force for many years to those of the Waterloo era. Units that had been in Canada before the war started almost certainly continued wearing the older style of dress at least until the end of 1813, and very likely in 1814 too. Reinforcements arriving from Europe during 1813 may have had the newer form of uniforms, and those arriving in 1814 probably did.

The dress of officers is problematical, however, as they were not issued uniforms, being expected to buy their own from private tailors. Therefore, officers might have turned out according to the new regulations much sooner than their men. According to the old regulations officers were to wear white breeches and boots on campaign, so any use of trousers was unofficial and might be of any color. Under the new regulations company officers were to wear short coatees instead of the earlier tail coats, and on campaign they were to replace bicornes with the "Belgic" form of shako and were supposed to wear grey trousers and short gaiters like their men (but, as noted above, could often get away with flouting regulations). They were still expected to wear white breeches in full dress.

@artillaryman :O reading that brought me back to my childhood, and my mum telling me the difference between trousers and pants. HAHA I even could picture the mother look when reading that. I forget that the majority of this hobby is from Europe.

@everyone thank you for the wealth of knowledge. That is why I love this site.