Figure 1.--This tin-type portrait shows three unidenified sdiblings. The look to be about 3-9 years old. Two of the children wear white long stockings. This was fairly common in the 1860s, but declined in subseqent decades, especially for boys. Like most tin-types, the portrait is undated. We suspect it was dated to the 1860s, but the late-50s is possible.

We see large numbers if boys weating white long stockings in the 1860s with the advent of the CDV. ANd we see both boys and girls wesaring them. We bot only note a lot of white stockings in the 60s, but for he first time we begin o see low long hey were. We see wjhite josiery earlier, but because boys wore lomg panrs, we havve no idea what vlengththey were. It is hard to tell from the photographic record how common white stockings were until the 1860s and the CDV. Most boys wore long pants and thus hosiery is not very apparent in available portraits. We see white stockings very commonly in the 1860s. This is when knee pants first appeared in large numbers. They were not yet dstandard, but they were widely worn by many boys for the first tim, especially in fashionable bnig cities. We begin to see many younger boys wearing kbee pants in the 1860s snd white long stocking were very common. A good example is Tom K. Christie in 1867. We are not sure how long the stockings were at mid-century. So we do not know if they were really long stockings, however, as early knee pants were quite long. We see the Johnson boys im Illinois wearing white long stockings in 1867. We also notice Julian and Charlie in 1864-67 wearing white stockings. These boys are a little older than most of the boys wearing shortened-length pants in the 1860s.

Created: 1:04 AM 7/24/2026
Last updated: 1:04 AM 7/24/2026