What’s The Deal With Those Silly Pilgrim Hats?
How did such a strange style become associated with America’s earliest European settlers?
We’ve all seen the hat before. It is black, has a conical upward piece with a flat top. The brim is round and wide. On the front there is adorned a simple buckle. This is the typical pilgrim hat. It makes its appearance every year in primary schools, Thanksgiving celebrations and depictions of the earliest years of European settlement in North America. So what is the deal with this odd looking hat?
This style of hat was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries in northern Europe, especially England and Holland. The hat was called a capotain and it was worn by people of all classes. Back then it was not known as a pilgrim hat because, at the time, there were no pilgrims. They were just Europeans.
The hat was especially popular with Puritans in England and they wore the hat to distinguish themselves from other religious groups. The Puritans were zealous members of the Church of England who were seeking to purify the church from, what they saw, as wrong and devious elements. At the time, most of those…
