Figure 1.--This undated CDV portrait shows a father posing with his young childtren, two boys and two girls. They look to be about 3-10 years of age. The boys are weariung similat cut away jacket suits with knicker pants. The CDV is undated. CDVs with a lot of wasted vertical space are consistent with 1860s portraits. The strioed stockings were most common in the 1870s. We think the portrait proibabky dates to the late-1860s, but the very-early-70s is npossible.

We know much more about the 1860s. Long pants for boys were still standard in the 1860s, even younger boys after breeching. And we see many more boys wearing suits. But we we begin to see younger boys wearing suits with both knickers and knee pants. And with the advent of the CDV we begin to see really large number of photograpohsic images including boys wearin suits. We believe that the shotened-length pants were most with fashionable mothers, mostly in the big northeastern cities. Notably the Lincoln boys always wore long pants suits. We begin to see more boys wearing shortened-length pants by the end of the decade, both knee pants and knickers. We see more knickers pants in the 60s than we see subsequently. This may be the British influence, we are not sure why. the portrait on the poreviius page shows boiys wearing knicker suits. It is undated. We would guess it was taken in the 1860s, but the early-70s is possible. White long stockings were common in the 60s. The porteaitg here looks like briyhers wearing similar suits also was probnly tsken in the late-1860s (figure 1).

Created: 1:40 PM 10/19/2020
Last updated: 1:40 PM 10/19/2020