Figure 1.--Here we see a large unidentified school group. It was a large sized caninet card, typical of the 1890s which is further confirmed by the fashions. The children look to be 2nd or third gradders about 7-9 years old. We are not sure if it is a single class or two classes of the same grade (form) combined for the portrait. The 43 children seem large for a single class. Note that there are two teacgers. One mught be the principal. A good ilustration as to how women came to dominate Amerrican primary school teaching in the 19th century. This is not a small rural school, but we suspect not a big city school either. There would have been grades and perhps even more classes. Note that there are plent of Fauntleroyb items, but no sailor suits. You can zoom in on the portrait to examine their clothing in detail: left, center, and right.

School portraits by the 1890s had become very common. Photography improved and had become incerasingly affordable. We see class portraits from all over the country, including one-room schools on the rapidly shrinking western frontier. We see boys commonly wearing suits to school, even in country schools, although there boys in warm weather commonly just wore blouses and knee pants. We still do not see many boys wearing overalls. Rather the boys are for the most part dressedup to go to school. Nor do we see many Fauntleroy suits, even though the 1890s was part of the Fauntleroy era. We do see many boys wearing Fauntleroy items, including Fauntleroy blouses abd floppy bows. Notive the number of colored blouses. Many boys wore straight-leg knee pants, especially in city schools. Knickers were not very commonabd we do not see them at private schools as was the case in Britain. The type of pants did vary. We see boys at some schools wearing long pants, but by the 80s this was not very common exceot at rural schools. Most boys. if they did not drop out earlier, ended their schooling in 8th grade (about age 13 years). The secondary school sytem was expanding. And in the 90s, knee pants were common even at these schools, but for the most part the older boys were wearing long pants. We are not entirely sure why there were such variations. Age of course was a factor. Boys and girls commonly wore long stockings. Black long stockings were especially common. Many younger boys wore blouses with large collars, sometimes ruffled Fauntleroy collars. We also see sailor suits, especially in urban schools. Sailor suits are not as common as one might think, in part because it appears to have been more of an urban, middle-class fashion. Girls wore dresses, often with pinafores, but this varied. We see some schools wghere the girls are not wearuing pinafores. Some children came to school barefoot, especially in rural areas, but this was not practgical if long distances were involved. We have some information on individual schools.

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Created: 7:30 PM 11/5/2022
Last updated: 7:30 PM 11/5/2022