Finely dressed lady carrying a walking stick in ersatz mountain scene.
Here is a good example of mid-1870s style, with the floor-sweeping dress trailing off behind this erstwhile mountain climber. She is of course not really in the mountains, but in the photographic studio of J Ganz in Zurich, standing next to a huge paper-maché boulder.
This image also demonstrates the universality of women’s fashion in the 19th century — this lady would not look out-of-place in London or Boston in that year. They were all wearing whatever was in vogue in Paris, with only minor local variations.
Daguerreotype of an Older Woman from 1855
This image shows an older woman wearing a light colored bonnet with lacy ties hanging down loose. The hair is center parted, of course, with side bulges typical of the early 1850s. Her dress is dark with epaulets on the sleeves and she wears a shiny silk shawl thrown around her shoulders. We can see many pleats where the skirt meets the bodice, but many other details are obscured by the shawl.
The dress has a broad white lace collar, and she is also wearing a thin neck ribbon. There is a dark broach at her throat, probably of inlaid jet. Very light tinting has been added to give her face a more natural color. No doubt she thought the daguerreotype drew her many wrinkles in a bit too sharp of detail.
The daguerreotype is cased, and has a fairly plain mat, with just a light embossed line around the opening, which is rectangular with rounded corners. The preserver is a lighter colored brass, and of a simple repetitive leaf and flower pattern.
4th July 1911 Marching Band in Keene NH
Proudly marching down the main street of Keene, New Hampshire, this band was probably one of several participating in the annual Independence Day parade in 1911. The gentlemen wear a fairly simple uniform with dark pants and a straight-cut coat with simple trim along the edges, and conductor-style billed caps.
Behind them on the left we can just see the over-decorated wide brimmed hat of a well dressed lady from that period, while to the right are several boys wearing knickerbockers — a baggy version of knee-breeches gathered just below the knee where they meet the long dark stockings. Some are wearing suit coats over those, and even those that aren’t seem to have long sleeves, even though it is July.
A couple men to the right have the flat-topped straw hats called boaters, with their broad contrasting dark grosgrain or silk hat bands.
Besides the ubiquitous American flags, several people have large dark umbrellas for shade from the bright sun, which is above, behind and to the left of the photographer.
H L King, May 10th 1885
Here is an 1885 picture of a graduating lawyer. Haven’t tried looking up the biographical details for him, but no doubt identification would be easy with all the details provided on the back of the photograph. The inscription reads:
Compliments of H L King, Cribbs, Pa, Westm’d Co, U of M “Law” Class ‘85, Ann Arbor, May 10th, ‘85.
Since it was taken in Ann Arbor (the front has an imprint from photographers Lewis & Gibson, Ann Arbor, Mich.) we know the U of M refers to the University of Michigan. Mr King is a resident of Cribbs Pennsylvania, in Westmoreland county. There is no Cribbs Pennsylvania listed in modern atlases, but there was a large Cribbs family who settled very early in Hempfield township, near the center of Westmoreland county, near modern-day Greensburg.
Lucy Ellen Mears 1870 tintype
This is a tintype photograph. It may have had a paper sleeve covering it originally, but those often tear, and the tintype falls out. Someone has helpfully identified the subject, location and date for this image, and written it on a label pasted to the back. The inscription reads “Lucy Ellen Mears, 19 months, Neponset Mass, 1870″. We didn’t find her with a quick census search of the 1870 census — the name was probably indexed wrong — but in the 1880 census we find 11 year old Lucy E Mears living in Boston (Neponset is a Boston neighborhood), daughter of John and Caroline. So the identification and date is probably correct, though of course we can not be sure. Only other identified photos of Lucy at the same approximate age could confirm the identification.
Note that she is sitting on the typical tasseled photographer’s chair, with a plain wall for a background — a typical low-budget photographer’s studio for the period. Tintypes were cheap, often just a dollar for a dozen, and some photographers specialized in just that form.
Lucy wears an off-the-shoulder checkered frock with a thin matching belt, and short sleeves tied up with ribbons at the back. Her hair is center-parted and pulled back, probably into a pony tail. There are light smudges of rouge coloring on the cheeks — two quick dabs to add a ‘life-like’ color to the image.
