Formal Buckle Shoes

[DWFII]

I may be wrong but I think the buckle shoe (not the Mary Jane) that we see being worn with kilts dates back to the mid 18th century--the Jacobite uprisings, Culloden, Prestonpans, etc....Scottish hopes for sovereignty, and so forth.

And the buckle shoe was the fashion in men's shoes right through the 1700's and early 1800's.

The Pilgrim era was at least a century previous, beginning in 1620. So no matter what you think about buckle shoes, I suspect it is a little off-base to equate them with Pilgrims. It's a little like saying that the Pilgrims had pumpkin pie on their harvest day (which in the 19th century we decided to remember as Thanksgiving). Or that they wore black all the time.