Figure 1.--This studio tintype portrait shows tow boys, presumanly brothers wearing identical single-breasted suits with vests and long pants. The boys look to be bout 7-10 years old. They both hold rounded crown hats, a popular style through much of the 19th century.

The high prevalence of boys wearing long pants still includes many younger boys, especially early in the decade. This varied from family to family. he mothe's fashion ence was a primary factor. We see school age boys of all ages wearing long pants. Although we begin to see some of the youngr boys wearing shoetened length pants. Gradually we see shortenened-length pants beginning to increase in popularity for younger boys, especially by the end of the decade. Even so, we mostly see boys wearing long pants suits in the 1870s. Shortend-length pants were more common than in the 1860s, but were still not standard boy's wear although by the end of the ecade they jad become very common for younger boys. About age 8 years was the cut off for shortened-length pants and we do not see boys older than 10 years wearing them in the 1870s. This means that teenagers and most pre-teens wore long pants. The boy here looks to be about 10-years olds and is a good example. We hope to compile a mote definitive assessment of age trends as we expand our American archive. Often ages have to be estimated as they are commonly not noted. We invite readers to let us know if you think that our age estimates are off. We hope to eventually fill in all the different ages. Here the photographic record is our best source. We do not see many store catlogs yet that can provide useful sizing information.

Created: 6:36 AM 5/12/2015
Last updated: 6:36 AM 5/12/2015