Maurice B. Tonkin

author

Maurice B. Tonkin

A mid-20th-century researcher whose work helped document the trades and daily life of colonial America, he is best known for detailed studies of wigmaking and barbering in Williamsburg. His surviving published work has a practical, historical feel that opens a small but vivid window onto 18th-century craft life.

1 Audiobook

The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg An Account of His Barbering, Hair-dressing, & Peruke-Making Services, & Some Remarks on Wigs of Various Styles.

The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg An Account of His Barbering, Hair-dressing, & Peruke-Making Services, & Some Remarks on Wigs of Various Styles.

by Thomas K. Bullock, Maurice B. Tonkin

About the author

Maurice B. Tonkin Jr. is known from Colonial Williamsburg research publications in the 1950s, where he worked with Thomas K. Bullock on studies of wigmaking, barbering, and hairdressing in colonial America. Their report Wigmaking in Colonial America, prepared for the Colonial Williamsburg Research Department in April 1957, shows him contributing to the kind of close documentary work used to interpret everyday trades for historians and visitors.

He is also credited as co-author of The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg, a work that focuses on the services, tools, and styles connected with the colonial wigmaker's craft. The subject may sound specialized, but that is part of its charm: Tonkin's known work preserves details of ordinary working life that larger histories often pass over.

Little biographical information about his life has been easy to confirm from reliable online sources, so the public record available here is centered mainly on his research and publications rather than on personal background.