Common perception today is that Kersey is a heavy, 100% woolen fabric woven in a “2 over 2” twill, usually fulled and napped to produce a firm surface finish. Much of the all-wool English “Army Cloth” run through the Blockade for Confederate uniform production was Kersey. Kersey fabric was originally a product of the English woolen industry.
The Federal Army’s Quartermaster specified all-wool kersey fabric for uniform coats and jackets, trousers, and greatcoats giving specifications for color, weight per yard and tensile strength. Kersey is a fabric type used in Civil War era uniform clothing that is familiar to modern living historians and material culture researchers. Researching these fabrics sometimes involves deciphering arcane terminology in source documentation to determine what textiles were being used for uniform production. To study or reproduce uniforms of the Civil War era, some understanding of period textile lexicon is fundamental even if you don’t weave your own material.
In researching mid-19th Century clothing from a late 20th - early 21st Century vantage point, being confronted by confusing or even contradictory terminology of that period occurs occasionally. When is “Kersey” not Kersey? Textile transactions between the Richmond Clothing Bureau and Kelly, Tackett, Ford, & Company by Dick Milstead
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