Figure 1.--Here we see two girls and a boy posing for camera. Reverse identifies the older girl as Lucille Childress Whitecotton and her Uncle Tom - "She was daughter of his oldest sister, Mary" - "They joked about his neice being the oldest". The portrait seems to be a postcard back ohitigraoh, but did not have thediviuded back and stamp box. We would guess the portrait ws taken about 1910. Notice it was not a studio portrait. It looks like it may have been taken by an itinerate photographer.

We have found some American children wearing tunics that seem to be girls, although in the early 20th century that was not always possible to tell. Tunics as far as we can tell were always worn by boys in the 19th century. We do not see mail order tunics offered for girls. This may have been a little different in the early 20th century. This was more common in American than in Europe. We think that this might reflect girls wearing hand-me-downs rather than mother purchasing tunics for their daughters. A complication here is that some girls' dresses seem to be styled rather like boys' tunics. This seems to be only the case of the last phase of tunics in the early-20th century. This actually is a development of some importance and occurs at just the time that we stopped seeing little boys wearing girl garmehjts like dresses. Girls in the 19th centuru made no effort to wear boyish garments. It would have been seen as improper. This is in sharp contrast to the 20th century, especially after World war I, where it became increasingly popular for girls to wear boiy gaements. Some of these tunic-looking girl outfits are clearly dresses, but with a variety of tunic elements. Thers are more difficult to descriminate from actual tunic suits. One useful indicator is that boys wore their tunic suits with bloomer knickers in the 20th century and they usually showed below the hem of the tunic. Here the length of the tunics and the bloomer knickers varied. Girls never wore the tunics with bloomer knickers or knee pants.

Created: 4:44 AM 12/21/2011
Last updated: 4:44 AM 12/21/2011