Cowboy Boot History

The boot’s development and migration to America happened during the Cromwell years when the king’s men -- the Stuart Cavaliers, dashing young men in jodhpurs and thigh-high riding boots -- served time in the new territories. Many purchased large tracts of land and settled in the South setting up plantations and using slave labour to farm their properties. They were the catalysts for the internal conflict of the American Civil War with many moving before, during and after the war to Texas and the west – where cowboy boot found its American roots.

The Northampton Museum in England, foremost in its collection of shoemaking, exhibits of a pair of 1630 boots with high tops, 2-inch heels and pointed toes, and significantly in keeping with the era, they were straights – i.e. neither right nor left.

At the turn of the 18th century, boots became fashionable, even for women. Their popularity rose to a crescendo in England when in 1815, the First Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, defeated the great French military strategist Napoleon at Waterloo, thereby popularising Wellington boots as contemporary style. Their heels were low cut and the tops calf-high.

That style was borrowed in 1847, by SC Shive, who in America patented the patterns and crimping board for a Wellington. Two decades later Wellingtons became the all- American style, while Europe had moved to the Hessian boot whose major promoters were the German army.

Used widely by the military through to the 1880s, their unsuitability for terrain and all-weather purpose, meant modifications and experimentation was necessary. Ultimately Spanish leather, heavily waxed on the flesh side, became the standard for the early cowboy boots. Horsemen took to wearing the “Coffeyville” with the scooped higher heel, and its front was grafted or pieced on.

The cowboy boot was beginning to emerge now in such fashions as the stovepipe tops, star and horseshoe inlays, stitch patterns and high heels and by1900 the four piece boot had become the dominant form. Since then styles have continued to emerge and with it the cowboy boot has become an established feature of American iconology.

Interestingly, lace-up boots were a common feature on the American frontiers landscape at the time and they too have their roots in military issue just the same as the wellington. The Northampton Museum also boasts evidence of Hyer lace-ups until 1926 being on offer through catalogues.