Figure 1.--Here we an unidentified cabinet card with three children who look to be about 3-8 yerars old. The boys wear collar-buttoning suits, but with different collars. One has fancy Fauntleroy trim, the other a plain Eton collar. The both have thec same wide-brimmed hats with flat crowns. Their sister wears a plain white dress. The photographer was Horace H. Dudley in Kettering. This was one of their several studios.

Broad-brimmed hats varied slightly in several different ways. These differences were minor. There were, however, two major types of these hats with destinctive differences. The two types the crown (rounded and flat) and brims (turned up, flat, and turned down). We are just beginning our assessment of these hats. Our preliminary assessment of these hats is that most were rounded-crown hats in the 19th century, but our archive is not yet sufficint to make any definitive asessment. We some flat crown hats after the turn if the 20th centurty. The other type of hat was associated with the brim. The dominant type was the upturned brims, like the hats the boys here are wearing. For the most part, the brims were only slighly upturned. We note flat brims after the-turn-of the 20th century. Down-turned brims were more common, but almost entirely found in the 1910s. After this, these hats quickly went out of styles in the 1920s.

Created: 12:01 AM 6/8/2023
Last updated: 12:01 AM 6/8/2023