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We have acquired images of several America families during the 1900s. They cover a wide range of families of varying social class, occupations, and regions. We see a range of different outfits worn by boys of different ages. There were wide differences in how children from different socil classes dressed as well as differences between urban and rural America. Whilw we have images from a range of families, there are more images available from wealthy and middle-class families. In particular we do not have mages of the familes of child workers. There were still few labor laws protecting women and children. We see some of the different styles of headwear such as sailor caps and flat caps. We see tunic suits, sailor suits, and a variety of other outfits such as kneepants and knicker suits. Most boys wore kneepants and long stockings were still common. The images show the family in both formal and informal situations. The standards of the day required relatively formal clothing even for informal situations, but we see the begining of informal wear when compared to the 19th century.
The Brattleboo Historical Society has a wonderful collection of glass plate photos from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Rural and small town American life is portrayed in a superb collection featuring images from New England. Photographs of the Crown family is part of this collection. The family has four boys and and at least two girls. The photos date from 1899-1918. The boys are Harold, Raymond, Richard, and Paul. I think this is the order of their ages. The photos are dated and in some cases mis-dated. The boys were breeched at different ages. The older boys I think were breeched at about 4-5. The other two boys were older when breeched. A photo of Richard, at I would guess 6-8 years of age, shows him in a lovely white dress with his rather large girl doll. Several other images taken at 3 or
4 years show him in dresses, curls, and always with a hair bow, playing with his dolly. Judging by the number of photographs of him, I would guess he was his Mother favorite. The dresses the boys wore before being breeched were not boy dresses. They all look like little girls in frilly dresses, curled hair, and hair bows. The boys always wore hair bows in their curls until their hair was cut, which was sometime after they were breeched. Several images show Richard and Paul in tunic suit outfits with ringlet curls and hair bows.
The photo was taken in Cravens, Vernon Parish, Louisiana, in the 1900s. What we don't know is if the family onwned the
farm or were share croppers. The portrait was probably taken by an intinerate photoigrapher. The family clearly dressed up for the portrait. It shows Mitchell Johnson, his wife Elizabeth McCurley and their ten children: Odis (the baby) and (left to right) Charley, Thomas Mitchell, Willie, Crocket Lee, Elias, George Washington, Johnny, Marshall, Winfred Scott. It is difficult to tell if the younger boys are wearing blouses or shirts. We can tell that the five younger children wear knee pants and are barefoot. The kneepants suggest that the portrait was taken in the 1900s rather than ther 1910s. Going barefoot was was common in the south. What we are not entirely sure about is if the younger children here would have liked to have had shoes. The children probably had shoes for school or at least for the winter season.
This portrait shows the Wiggs family. We know that they were from Tennessee, but we don't know just where. The portrait is undated. We would guess it was taken in the very early 20th century. We know their names: Left to Right - Standing: Norman, Zula, John Henry, Lela, Hubert, Bert. Seated: Henry Patten, Phoebe, Robert. Children in Front: Gene, Earl, Brown. Henry and Phoebe Wiggs had 10 children. They look to range from infancy to 17 or 18 years of age. The family obviously dressed up for the portrait, but the younger children are mostly barefoot. The younger boys wear ruffled vlouses and floppy bows. The older boys have suits. Even though they dressed up, they did not go to a very well established studio. At least the back drop suggests it was rather a shoe-string operation. Perhaps it was an intinerant photographer or a photographer at a county fair. Two of the older boys have rounded detachable collars.
The farm family is unidentitified. The mount and clothing, however, suggest it was taken in the early 1900s. We do not know where it was taken. We are not sure how to interpret the background. The photographer did not put the home in the background. There were two boys, four girls and a baby. The younger boy wears a Fauntleroy blouse without a floppy bow. The older boy wears a suit jacket with a large ruffled collar abd a small bow. The girls all wear dresses.
This is a fashionable family, posed in an outdoor tablaux. It looks like a family snapshot, perhaps taken by father. We see two children. The little boy wears a sailor suit and the girl has a purse hanging around her neck.
Mother is seated in front of son and daughter and perhaps grandmother on the right. A great example of period clothing. The photograph is undated. It could have been taken in the laste-2890s, but we tink thec early-1900s is more likely. , but we would guess it was taken about 1900-05 because it isan outdoor snapshot rather than a studio cadiet card and the boy wears white socks rather than long stockings.
Charles Hart Spencer and his wife Mary Acheson Spenser were a prominent upper-middle-class family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the late 1890s and early 1900s. They had seven children--two boys (Mark and Charles) and five daughters (Adeline, Kate, Ethel, Mary and Elizabeth). They were solid Presbyterians like so many other prominent citizens of Pittsburgh at the turn of the century. They lived on Amberson Avenue, one of the finer streets in the Shadyside district of Pittsburgh near the University of Pittsburgh in the East End of the city. Shadyside is (and was) a lovely area with spacious houses and tree-lined avenues, giving little sense of the industrialism, especially the steel industry, that made the city so prosperous. The present photograph was taken in July, 1900, by Mr. Spencer, the father of the children, who in his spare time was something of an amateur photographer. The family spent vacations at another large house in Marion, Masssacusetts.
Here we have another Pittsburgh family about 1900. It is unfortunately a small image, but interesting because it shows the inside of the family hime. We don't know the family's name. They seem to be a family in comfortable circumstances, but not a rich family. They are in a Victorian-style parlor of which the prominent musical instrument is an organ. Mother
and father and adult relatives occupy the back row. Three children, apparently siblings, are seated in the front row. The oldest boy, about 18, sits on the organ stool propped up by what looks like a pillow or a folded blanket.
Frank Fuller Avery was born in Indiana during 1862. He married Anna Avery in 1892. They had two sons, Frank and Warren Avery. Their father had an interest in photography and has left us some interesting imges of the boys. The family moved to eastern Washington state in 1898, and were connected
with the Colville Indian Agency at Fort Spokane, Washington. Frank Avery Sr. was first the superintendant of the Indian Boarding School at Fort Spokane and later became the inspector of Colville Agency Day Schools. Frank Sr. also took many pictures of life at Fort Spokane between 1901 and 1916 including some that include members of his family.
Harold and Phyllis Fitzroy-Carrington were extensively photographed outside what is probably their home in New York in about 1904-15. A HBC contributor has a collection of nine albums of photographs that were taken by the childrens father, an enthusiastic amateur photographer. As a result, there are many charming images beside stiff, formal portraits. Their father was obviously a wealthy man. They had a New York City brick row house and they also had a country home called 'Mallowfield' at Mamaroneck. N.Y. There are approximately 100 photos in each album, many of them of Harold and his siblings playing with toys, pets, bikes etc some in swimming costumes, some playing musical instruments. The collection is a wonderful view of childhood in a wealthy NewYork family in the years before World War I. I believe that Harold was born about 1897 and Phyllis about 1900.
At the turn of the 20th century many Americans still lived on the farm. This family in 1905 lived in a sod house (figure 1). The family portrait is especially interesting as it shows the house that the family lived in rather than just the family in a photographic studio. Lumber was not available on the prarie and beyond the price that many homesteaders could aggord. This family lived in North Dakota near the Canadian border. This family has six young children, all are barefoot. The boys wear kneepants. Notice the one boy with the family Bible. Also note the important place for the family dog. Farm families tended to be large. There was a lot of work to be done on the family farm. Note how tightly spaced the children are. There are already six children and it is likely that there was eventually several more children. Insights on homesteading can be gained from the 2002 PBS program Frontier Home, although it is set in the 1880s and well to the west where lumber was plentiful.
Unfortunatelt this snap shot is unidentified. The fact that it is a snapshot and the style of the clothes suggest to us that it was probably taken about 1905-10. This is just a guess. We would be interested in any assessments readers may have. The boy wears a ehite middy blouse with a colored trim and a colored patch pocket. He also wears kneepants and long stockings. He looks to be about 8-9 years old. His sisters look a little older and wear matching dresses.
Here a wondeful scene fron turn-of-the-20th century New York. They look to be a well established family. We see the father, the mother and their two two. The boys are Harold and Alfred Wallgren. The older boy looks to be around 5 years old. He wears a sailor tunic with white long stockings and button shoes. Both boys have lonish hair. One done in bangs the other in curls. The younger boy is about 3 years old. It is less clear what the younger boy wears. It could be a dress, bit looks to me like a differently styled tunic suit. The portrait was taken in a famous New York studio--the Scherer Studio. They had three studios including one in Brooklyn. We have two shots taken at the same time. The body language suggests the boys were very close. In fact the body language of the whole family shows a wonderfully close family. The father looks serious and successful. The mother looks tender, but not fawning,
Here we have five children from a Black American family about 1905. We do not know where the photograph was taken, but at the time most Blacks still lived in the South. The children except the baby all wear shirt sleeves.
The precise identity of this family is unknown. We do know that the photograph was taken on Martha's Vinyars, a island south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The family looks prosperous. Martha's Vinyasrd is today a very prosperous community. We believe the same was true at the turn of the century, but probably not nearly as true as today. The photograph wasc taken about 1905-06. The
squinting boy in the front row (about 10 or 11 probably) wears above-the-knee knickers with longs tockings and a shirt with a fancy bow tie. Notice also his little low-crowned brimless black hat. It looks as though he is a bit unhappy at having his picture taken with the rest of his clan. Perhaps he doesn't like having to be so dressed up for the occasion, or maybe the sun is in his eyes.
Here we see a portrait from Texas (perhaps Williamson Co.) about 1906. We see Maggie Fisher Casey with her four children. The children (counter-clockwise from the top left) are Overton Harris Casey, Evalee Casey, Harold Casey (the baby), and Wayne Casey. The portrait illustrates many popular fashion trends at the time. We have no information about the family's social status, but we would say iy was a family of modest means.
Many of our family images are portraits of a nuclear family, meaning the parents and children. There are also images of extended families, some of which can be quite large. This portrait shows the large Lowry family in Missouri during 1907 showing the various styles being worn by all the family members. The boys all wear kneepants suits, except for one little boy wearing a white tunic. The women wear long dresses. The girls wears dresses cut at various lengths below their knees. Here we wonder. We know the boys wanted long pants like their fathers. Did the firls want long dresses like their mothers?
Unfortunately we have no provinance associate with this family snapshot. It surely must be a grandfather with his two grandchildrem. On the early 20th century before Social Security, it was common for families to include the grandparents. Yhe gentleman hear could have served in the Civil War.
His two grandchildren--a girl about 7 and a boy about 8--is American or European. I tend to think it is American because of the rocking chair and the look of the house. We might guess it was located in the South, in part because of grandfather's hat. The view of the house is another interesting aspect of this photograph. This could be a farm house, but I think more likely is a home in a small town or suburban community. The family seems to be living in comfortable circumstances, judging from the grounds and the large house in the background. The angle of the sun somewhat spoils the portrait of the little girl in a white dress with black stockings. The boy, accordingly, is squinting with the sun in his eyes. He wears a white blouse, grey knee pants, black long stockings, and hightop shoes. I think the photo dates from the later 1900s.
Here we have the Andrew Rongley family. A readervtells us that Andrew Rongley was his great-uncle. Rongley immigrated from Norway in the late 19th-century. Here we see his wife and children. The three boys wear identical white blouses, floppy bows, and knickers. Their younger suster wears her hair done in braids with hairbows and a white dress.
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