Figure 1.--As can be seen here, hats dominated headwear in the 1880s for everyone, men and boys as well as women and girls. We believe that this is a church group so everyone is dressed up. This may explain why nearly everyone is wearing hats. Notice the one boy waring what looks like a kind of sailor cap. Put your cursor on the image to see one other boy wearing a cap--a very similar style. Note that he too is surrounded by a sea of hats.

Hats were by far the dominant headwear for boys in the 1880s. We do see, however,some caps. We see quite a variety of caps by the 1880s invluding peaked caps, sailor caops, and Scottish styles. Caps were seen as less formal headwear, although some of the less common styles like Glengaries were worn with formal cloths by boys from fashionable families. We see several varieties. We still seea few Civil War kepis. And sailor caps can ve seen. Many of the caps we see are seasonal winter caps. A few boys wore what might be called jockey caps, essentially an early baseball cap. No boys wore, however, what was at the time a baseball cap, essentially a pillbox cap (cylindrical sides and flat top with a peak or brim). This was not the case in the winter when caps were developed for cold weather winter wear. This was a 19th century development. We do not notice winter caps in the 18th century with the exception of some fur headwear. We are not entirely sure when cold weather caps first appeared, but we believe it was around mid-century. They certainly were being worn by the 1880s.  all those styles, bh far the most common headwear was hats. We note a church group of some sort, with all the children we would guess are probably a Sunday School group. This would presumamnly mean that everyone was dressed up in their Sunday best. We suuspect that some of the boys might have have had headwear for everyday dress, This could include caps, although we do not know to what extent caps were involved.

Created: 12:08 PM 5/15/2016
Last updated: 12:09 PM 5/15/2016