Figure 1.--These unidentified boys look to be brothers about the same age. we would guess they are about 4-5 years old. One boy wears a dress and the other is breeched. We think both are boys. A girl with a stick, perhaps a walking stick is not very likeky. The hair style od the child wearing a dress does not look like a gurl's hir style. All we know for sure is that the portrait was taken in 1889 by the F.M. Bays studio in Ellisville, Illinois.

Most of the brother images we see with dresses are the older boys wearing pants and the younger unbreeched boys wearing dresses or other skirted garments. We see only a few images of boys who look to similarly aged brothers and one is breeched and the other is not. Such images are not common, but we do see a few. Unfortunately in these instances it is not clear what the clothing conventions were. Here there are no explanations and often not identification. We are left work out the family conventions as best we can by studying the images. Perhaps one of the children is a girl. And boy cousins are another possibility. Perhaps an older boy looks younger. And we are not entirely sure that once a boy was breeched that all his dresses were thrown away. We wonddr if there was a period after a boy was first breeched tht he might still have worn drsses on some occassions for a while. This we are still not sure about. We would be very interested in any insights that readers may have to help us understand on these and related issues.

Created: 9:29 AM 6/25/2012
Last updated: 9:29 AM 6/25/2012