Figure 1.--Here we see a cabinet card portrait of an unidentified child wearing a plaid dress. Notice the front lacing. There are also ribbons hanging from the neckline. The child wears a ring, unusually on the index finger. We are not sure if this means anything. The cut of the dress seems a little shorter than was common. We are still working on the chronology of hem lines. As was common in America, the child wears dark long stockings, probably black long stockings. The child looks to be about 8-years old. That rather suggests a girl, but is not conclusive. The child certainly looks like a boy, but some girls also had short hair and the center part often inficated it ws a girl. We are not sure how to date this image, but would probably guess the 1880s. The studio was Masterson in Port Jervis, New York.

We have found several images that are not identified. Often there are cluses which help us make reasonabke guesses about the gender if the children pictured. In other cases there are few clues or contradictory clues which makes it impossible to make an infomed assessment. And of course younger children are often difficult to identify. We will archive the images we can not identify here. We incourage HBC readers to provide any insights they may have about these images.

Image 1

Here we see a cabinet card portrait of an unidentified child wearing a plaid dress. Notice the front lacing. There are also ribbons hanging from the neckline. The child wears a ring, unusually on the index finger. We are not sure if this means anything. It ws not very common for children or even sdulkts to do this. The cut of the dress seems a little shorter than was common. We are still working on the chronology of hem lines. As was common in America, the child wears dark long stockings, probably black long stockings. The child looks to be about 8-years old. That rather suggests a girl, but is not conclusive. The child certainly looks like a boy, but some girls also had short hair and the center part often inficated it ws a girl. We are not sure how to date this image, but would probably guess the 1880s. The studio was Masterson in Port Jervis, New York.

Created: 7:16 AM 6/17/2012
Last updated: 7:16 AM 6/17/2012