Figure 1.--Here we have an unidentified cased Daguerreotype of a boy wearing a cut-away jacket. Note the pants and jacket do not match. The boy looks to be abou4, perhaps 5 years old. The portrait is also undated. We would guess it was taken in the 1850s, but the 40s is a possibility. As with all these Dags, we welcome reader input on dating.

We have primarily noted primary school age boys wearing these jackets, about 6-10 years of age in the 1850s. Some of the younger boys may have just been breeched. We have found a few younger boys. This is just preliminry assessmnt as our archive is still limited for the 1850s. This means we do not yet have a valid sampling. so we are still working on our age assessment. Before the 1860s the photograohic indutry was growing beyond that in Europe, but we only see huge numbers of images in the 1860s with the CDV and cabinet cards. Another problem here is so few images before the CDV in the 1860s are dated. Ambrotypes are basically from the mid-1850s through the early-60s. Dags could have been talenen from the 1840s through the early-60s and thus are difficult to date.

Created: 8:10 PM 6/9/2017
Last updated: 8:10 PM 6/9/2017