Figure 1.--This CDV portrait is unidentified, but was certainly taken in the 1860s. This CDV has been tinted. The younger chilf has bee given a blue dress, bu bdar in mind that modern color conventions had not yet become established. We are not sure about the gender of the younger child. The face looks boyish, but the center hair part suggests the child is a girl. We suspect the child does not have curls like the older briother becuse there is not enough hair yet. This pprtrait came out of an album from Wisconsin. The studio was Crum & Sharp in Watkins, New York.

We note, however, relatively few images of boys wearing ringlet curls. The general trend was for shorter hair styles than the 1850s. We note some boys wearing ringlet curls, but a very small proprtion of the portraits of boys we have found, including younger boys. The photographic record represents a way of assessing this, perhaps an imperfect one, but still a very helpul indicator. While we can't quantify it with any precession, we can say that ringlets were not common for boys. We believe that the photographic record represents a fairly accurate indication that ringlets were not very commo for boys. The portion of the population not well covered by the photographic record were the very poor. The falling prices for portraits in the 60s meant that the coberage was wider during the 50s. And the fact that the poor were not likely to do their children's hair in ringlets means that the photographic record covers most of the boys that would have been likely to wear ringlets. We are not saying that no boys wore ringlets. We have noted portraits of boys wearing ringlets, but except for the very young, it seems a relatively rare hair style for boys.

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Created: 4:43 PM 10/22/2012
Last edited: 4:43 PM 10/22/2012