Figure 1.--This cabinet vard portrait shows John Sharp Jr., age 3 ½ years. John wears a plaid dress with velvet trim. Notice the lacy pantalettes, dark long stockings, abd high-topshoes. He ha a narrow, upturned brim straw hat. We do nit se streamers, but this is difficult to tell. The studio won a competition in 1888 so we would guess the portrait was taken about 1890. The studio was Davis in Richmond, Virginia. Click on the image for a fuller discussion.

We have found some portraits where the boys are holding their hats or the hats are somewhere in the portrait. Caps were much less common, but most of these portraits have boys who have had their curls cut. Hats were the dominant headwear for both boys and girls in the 19th century. We some boys wearing caps in the 19th century, buy not very commonlynwith dresses. Not until the end of the century do we see caps becoming the major type of headwear for boys. We notice some headwear styles, but do not have a complete idea of the different styles worn. We note some younger boys wearing fancy bonets. Rounded-crown hats were common. Plainer wide-brimmed sailor hats were also worn. The choice of headwear was influenced by ages and the boys wearing dresses were of course the younger boys. Thus we see the headwear styles worn with dresses were the styles popular for the younger boys. As caps were becoming more popular, the convention of dressing little boys in dresses and other skirted garments was going out of style. We do see some boys waring caps with dresses, not as many as those wearing hats, but we do se some. Sailor caps were thenmost common. A good example was Lancaster Witzleben.

Created: 7:39 PM 10/19/2012
Last updated: 10:58 PM 3/24/2015