Figure 1.--Headwear used to be more important than is the case today. Children commonly wore hats and caps in the 19th and early-20th centuries. We have archived a few vintage headwear items. Boys in the 19th century commonly wore rounded crown hats, although they were going out of style by the turn of the century. Most boys wore plain unadorned hats. Younger boys not yet breeched might wear a decorated hat. An example is a natural straw boys rounded crown hat. The hat was made of natural (uncolored) plaited straw. It was a round hat with a rounded, but shallow crown. Source: Wisconsin Historical Museum

Headwear used to be more important than is the case today. Children commonly wore hats and caps in the 19th and early-20th centuries. We have archived a few vintage headwear items. Boys in the 19th century commonly wore rounded crown hats, although they were going out of style by the turn of the century. Most boys wore plain unadorned hats. Younger boys not yet breeched might wear a decorated hat. An example is a natural straw boys rounded crown hat (figure 1). The hat was made of natural (uncolored) plaited straw. It was a round hat with a rounded, but shallow crown. There was aide brim. Here the brim is turned up slightly over one ear and turned down slightly above the other. We are not sure just how the Museum knows that it was woirn in this fashion, but there may have been bends molded into the hat. There is a ruched and twisted ivory striped ribbons wrapped all around the crown like a a less flamboyant hat band in a stndaed boy's or man's hat. A pompom including ivory feathers have been added above upturned portion of crown; tightly pleated netting mixed with looped narrow ivory ribbons run around brim on underside of base of crown An additional ivory striped ribbons make two wide chin ties, sewn to inside of crown. Chin straps were common for hats at the time, especually for children and women, but we even see them used in military headwear. These asre mor conspicuoos than common in boys' headwear. We might have thought it was worn by a girl, but it was by a Charles P. Vogel (1894-1959) at the turn of the 20th century. We would gues tha he would have worn the hat at ages 3-5 years or 1897-99. Charles was born October 1894 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was the son of Fred, Jr. (1851-1936) and Louise (Pfister, b. 1857) Vogel. He married Eileen Kelly in 1928 and had two children, Philip F. and Mary Carleen. He worked as the director of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. He died in 1959. While the hat was worn by a boy, it could have been worn by girl just as boys at the time still wore dresses. In fact, Charles almost certainly wore it with a dress before he was breeched, probbly about age 5. There was a social-class factor involved here. It is unlikely a working-class boy would have worn a hat like this.

Source

Wiconsin Historical Museum.

Created: 4:52 AM 7/29/2009
Last updated: 4:52 AM 7/29/2009