Figure 1.--This unidentified boy looks to be about 8 years old. He wears a button-on suit with a collar buttoning jacket. A small white collar is done with a stock-like black bow. Notice the waistband hising the connecting butons. While there is no suit jacket, the top and bloomer knickers are done in marching suiting material. A stripe frame the top buttons, sleeve wrists, and pants. We not only see the shirt collar, but also the sleeves at the wrists. The CDV portrait is undated. We would guess it was probably taken just after the Civil War during the late-1860s. The studio was Brown in Trenton, New Jersey. The cost of CDVs is indicated at $1.50 per dozen. Compare that with a Dag which might cost $5.00.

The tops of these button-on suits were done in a variety of styles. Commonly they buttoned or were closed at the top, but even so there were many variants. As as far as can tell the tops were always long sleeves until after World War I. Girls might have short sleeve dresses, but boys had long sleve tops. We are unsure what the tops were called in the 19th century. While they might be called shirts or blouses, the first suits we see in the early 1860s were made with the same heavy material as the pants, a heavier material than normally used for shirts. They by definition were not jackets becaise to pants had to button on to them. These tops seem more like jackets than shirts because they were made with suiting material, but they were not jackets independent of the pants. Only later do we see boys wearing button-on tops in lighter material that look more like shirts and blouses. Theere were waist bands to hide the connecting buttons. Notice the brominnt waist band here done with piping matcjing the button frames, wtisr sleev and pants stripe (figure 1).

Created: 8:44 AM 9/26/2014
Last updated: 8:44 AM 9/26/2014