Figure 1.-- Here we see a cabinet card portrait of an unidentified boy wearing what looks like a double-breasted knee pants suit with a loppy bow and black long stockings. He is holding a military style peaked cap. The portrait is not dates, but the cloths and mount suggest the 1890. The studio is C. Jessen with studios in Providence and East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

We believe that these caps are basically a military style adopted by boys from the Napoleonic wars. These caps seem to be an European style adopted in America. Drawings suggest they wre worn with tunuc suits. We see drawings of boys wearing these caps in the early 20th century. With the advent of photography we can begin to assess thse caps more closely (1840s). We see boys wering these aps from the earliesr=t days of photography. A good example is an unidentified boy, wearing a tunic outfit, we think in the 1850s. And on the previous page we see a boy about 1865 wearing one of these caps. It was not a particularly common style. We see more boys wearing other headwear styles. We do occassionally see it and see it often enough that it certainly was not a rare style. So far the examples we see most cmmonly come from the 1850s-60s. We have found severl examples in the 1890s. We continue to see examples at the turn-of the 20th century, but not much beyond the early 1900s.

Created: 4:36 AM 8/17/2008
Last updated: 7:41 AM 5/24/2017