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Observer, Volume XL, Issue 17, 27 December 1919, Page 19

Somebody \v.ih discovered that, in celebrating the many centenaries that fall due "this year, it should not be forgotten that 1919 is the centenary of the detachable collar. Hannah Montague, the wife of a blacksmith in Troy, New York, says this student, made the first detachable collar in 1819. Until that year, Mr. Montague, and all other men, had worn collars undetachable. Mrs. Montague changed all that; and now, it is said, some 200,000 yards of goods are used every day for making collars by a single factory in the town where Mrs. Montague surprised her husband with the first separate one. The Rev. Ebenezer Brown, it appears, first put Mrs. Montague's product on sale, and his. enterprise was the forerunner of about seven square blocks of collar and shirt factories within a mile radius. Modestly and unassumingly, Mrs. Montague established an industry.