OBJECT HISTORY: A Hudson’s Bay Company Point Blanket Coat

This wool coat was constructed from a ‘point blanket’ made by the Hudson’s Bay Company, likely during the early 1920s. A Wausau businessman wore it at one of the town’s early Winter Frolics, an annual winter sports festival that attracted tourists from as far as Chicago. The businessman belonged to a group of local business…

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Read more about the article Emelie Manthei’s Point Blanket Coat
A Point Blanket Coat

Emelie Manthei’s Point Blanket Coat

When the Great Depression hit Wausau in the 1930s, Emelie Manthei (now Emelie Borth) was a high school student from a working-class family. Her father lost his job before finding employment with the Works Progress Administration (WPA), where he helped construct the…

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The Wausau Group: The Businessmen Who Revived Wausau’s Economy

Located on the Wisconsin River, Wausau developed as a logging town in the 1830s. George Stevens chose the site because of the waterfall that spanned the river, which provided power for sawmills used to turn the felled trees into lumber.  The waterfall,…

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The Wausau Winter Frolic: Wausau’s History as a Sports Capital

In 1929 a teacher in Waupaca asked her pupils what Wisconsinites did for winter sports. According to one newspaper, the children “with one accord all exclaimed: ‘They go to Wausau!’” In the 1920s, when Wisconsinites thought of winter sports, they thought of…

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In 1818 Anna Maria von Phul painted this picture of a Native American woman wearing a white wool trade blanket. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

What is a Point Blanket Coat?

The practice of converting Hudson’s Bay Company blankets into coats began years before the company began mass-manufacturing point blanket coats in the twentieth century. During the fur trade, Native Americans hunters traded beaver pelts for wool point blankets. Point blankets were waterproof…

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