Figure 1.-- This cabinet card portrait shows two brothers described as 8 and 11 years old. The younger boy wears a sailor suit. His older brother wears a doublke-breasted uit with high lapels. Both boys wear knee pants and long stockings. Their hair is carefully combed for the portrait. This would have required mother for the younger brother. The older brother could have combed his own hair, bit it is so perfectly done that we guess mother must have at least put the final touchesn it. What we are unsure about is why the boys have different parts. Did mother decode that or did the older boy want a stylish center part? The portrait was taken October 23, 1899. The stidio information embossed on the bottom front was the Heinz Studio, Sharon, Pennsylvania.

Younger boys might have center parts throughout the century. This was particulary common with younger boys that have Fauntleroy ringlets in the 1880s and 90s. We only see older boys with center parts behinning in the 1890s. see both school age boys nd teen agers with these center parts in the 1890s. Many younger boys with ringlets had center parts, but center parts for older boys with short hauir were not very common in the 1880s. The exception here was Fauntleroy ringlet curls. Virtually all of the 19th century examples we have found date to the 1890s. We are still working out the age trends in the 1890s when we see most of the center-part boy portraits. Most of the portraits we have fond with center parts are pre-teen boys. The boy on the previous page in the later part of the decade looks to be about 8 years old. We think teenagers by the end of the decade may have begun wearing center parts, but we have not yet been able to confirm this. we are still wirking in prevalence. The center parts by the turn-of the century had become seen as very stylish. And while at first just seen with little boys we see even older teens with these center parts by the turn-of-the century. A good example of a younger boy is an unidentified boy in 1893. For the most part these center parts were plain, but mothers being mothers somtimes added some stylish flairs. we notice an unidentified 11-year old Pennsylvania boy in 1899 (figure 1). His brother is 8 years old.

Created: 11:27 PM 1/30/2016
Last updated: 11:27 PM 1/30/2016