Figure 1.--This is the earliest school portarit we have found with a special school mount. It was taken during the 1883-84 school year. It looks to be a class and not the whole school. The children look to be about 8-9 years old, although there is one younger boy. We see some headwear, both caps and hats. The boys wear suits with knee paants as far as we can tell. The girks wear dresses, many with pinafores. Some of the children in pinafoes look like boys. This us unusual. It is more likely that they are girls with shirt hair, but two-three look very boyish. One of the children for some reason has their face scratched out.

School photographs are a treasure trove of information on children's photography because we see both boys abd girls from about 6-19 years of age. Thus we see all of the various garments children were wearing at the various age levels. Because most of the portarits were taken outdoors we even see headwear on some of the portarits. We mostly see boys wearing hats. Some of the boys were weraring caps, but hats dominated. Thevpoeratit here is a good example. We see boys wearing a range of outfits, but mostly suits. This was the standard wearm even in rural schools. This reflects thr fact that casial styles were not yet very commom. We see both collar buttoning and lapel jackets. Many were worn with vests. We also see jackets that look like short tunics. We see larger white collars. Fauntleroy suits begame a major style, but we do not see mamy at schoolngiven the age range. We do begin to see some sailor suits. Boys mostly wore long pants suits, but younger boys especially in the city might wear knee aopnts. As the century developed we see older boys wearing knee pants. By the end of the decade knee pants were becoming standard, but not yet common for teenagers. Knee pants were bot as common in rrural areas, esprcially for older boys. The girls all wore dresses, often wih a pinafrore. We are not sure id the portarits without pinafores were because the girls took them off for the portrait or actually did nit wear them. Bith biys andvgirks wore long stockings, mostly black long stockings. Boys wore knee pants worn with long stockings, mosthy black long stockings. The girks wire rgeir dresses with long stockings. We primarily see high-top button shies for both boys and girls.

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Created: 4:48 AM 7/8/2020
Last updated: 4:48 AM 7/8/2020