BIRTH OF THE COWBOY HAT:  On this day in 1830, John Batterson Stetson, inventor of the Stetson, was born in Orange, New Jersey.

Stetson’s father was a hatter, and he taught his son the trade.  But as a young man John was diagnosed with tuberculosis and told he didn’t have long to live.  Not wanting to waste the years he had left making hats, he headed west, first to Missouri.  He wanted to see the country before it was too late.  When gold was discovered in the Colorado Territory, he jumped at the chance to go.

But a splendid thing happened to him once he started breathing in the mountain air.  He started to feel better.  After a while, he felt fine.  Was he misdiagnosed?  Or miraculously cured?  I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure.

What we do know is this:  While in Colorado, Stetson was unimpressed by the coonskin caps, straw hats, and wool derbies that so many Westerners wore at the time.  He believed he could make a superior hat of waterproof felt.  Soon he returned to the East and started a company that would manufacture a hat that he called the Boss of the Plains.

One of the features of the hat was that it could be molded into the shape preferred by the owner.  A crease could be put into the crown, the sides could be rolled up.  And lots of people who purchased the hat started to do exactly that.  Eventually, the Boss of the Plains became the familiar cowboy hat.

Stetson became a wealth philanthropist and lived to be 75–not bad for a guy who wasn’t expected to see his 35th birthday.