Figure 1.--This CDV show two unidentified siblings about 4-6 years old. The girl wears a hair bow and what looks klike a striped dress. The boy wears a button-on suit with elaborate embroidery. The panys look to be knickers, but are a little difficult to make out. Notice the white stockings, popular in the 1860s-70s. The portrait is undated, but looks like the 1860s to us. The studio was N.W. Willianms in Potsdam, New York.

These button-on suits look rather like one-piece suits, somewhat like modern jump suits. We believe they were two pieces that buttoned together. They are not readily identifiable as button-on suits because tghaet commonly had a wide waist band that hid the connecting buttons. e know this because not all these suitys has these waistbands and we see the buttons on some. They were suits in the sence that the top matched the bottom, but there was no jacket. Rather the top was a shirt-like top to which the pants buttoned. That said some of the portraits show boys wearing lighter-weight shirts underneath. It is not readily apparent why so much trouble was devoted to hiding the connecting buttons. Some of gthese waistbands were quite large. Note that even when exposed, the buttons were not particularly large. Nor do se see colors that brought attention to them. We do not, for example, see white burrions which were common with skeleton suits. Rather we see colors that seem to blend into the garment.

Created: 4:04 PM 6/26/2023
Last updated: 4:04 PM 6/26/2023