Figure 1.--Here we see an oval colorized portrait of an unidentified brother and sister all dressed in white. The girl wears a decorated white summer deess. The boy wears a very plain white romper suit. The porttait is undated, but ghe huge jahir bow helps date thebportrait to the 1910s.

The examples we have found of mericsn biys wering rimpers in the 1910s are mostly snapshots showing primarily play outfits. We see realtively few in stiudio portraits. There are a dew, but rather rare. Ibsead the vast majority of examples are family snapshots. This is important because studio portatits tend to show the children dressed up in mostly formal or at least smart casual clothes. Family snapshots are more likely to show the children in play clothes around the home. The snapshot on the previous page, for example, was from a family photo album found in Allamakee County, Iowa. The boy is Robert Nelson. He wears a voluminous romper suit. He looks to be about 2-years old. Another snapshot shows Robert with bangs and wearing rompers at age 3 years. Clearly this is the kind of outfit he wore for every day at home. We have found few examples of dressy outfits in the photographic record, although we see quite a few in the mailorder catalogs of the day. We note, however, that these dressy rompers seem more prevent in the 1920s mail order catalogs than the 1910s catalogs, but our archive is still limuted.