Figure 1.--Almost all 19th century photographs are studio portraits. So we have very little demographic information on tunics. Dressed up for a protrait we do not know where the people lived. This changed with the innovation of the amateur family snapshot at the turn of the 20th century. The Kodak Brownie brought photography out of the studio and finally we have all kinds of demograohic information along with fashion information. There is no doubt the two boys here wearing identical tunics lived in rural America, in fact on a farm. This was a postcard back snapshot mailed in 1909. The nessage on the back read, "August 30th 09. Dear Cousin Grave - We thought we would send you a picture of my dear Daisy and my little dog Dudle wish you would come and see us and tell Uncle Charley and Aunty to come to. Love to all. I am your Cousin Chas. E. Rires. Orvel A Rires." The card was addressed to Miss Grace Bevers in Homer Ill's. The card was mailed in Jacksonville, Ill. Interestingly the cow and dog are mentioned, but not the boys who look to be about 5-7 years old. A reader writes, "I think the two boys are mentioned when they say from your cousin then two names follow."

We thought at first that most of the boys wearing tunics were from middle- and upper-class city boys. But as we work on tunics, we find quite a number of rural boys wearing tunic suits. We do not notice them much at school but we do see rural boys wearing them when dressing up. We do not have a good fix on the rural families yet. We think that working-class boys in the city did not commonly wear tunics. This may be the same in the rural areas with poor boys less likeky to wear tunics than more affluent farm families. All we can say at this time is that tunics were worn by boys in rural areas, both small towns and farm families. Hopefully we can get a better fix on this as our HBC archive expands. This is a little difficult to assess in the 19th century when mpst portraits were takem in studios. At the turn-of-the 20th century with the advent of the Kodak Brownie and the family snapshot we begin to see outside images which we can place the photograph and tell much more about the family than a studio portrait.

Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
[Return to the Main American tunic page]
[Introduction] [Activities] [Biographies] [Chronology] [Clothing styles] [Countries] [Topics]
[Bibliographies] [Contributions] [FAQs] [Glossaries] [Images] [Links] [Registration] [Tools]
[Boys' Clothing Home]

Created: 10:43 AM 12/24/2017
Last edited: 10:43 AM 12/24/2017