9 comments

  1. In the tintype of the baby holding the book with the adult hands:often times the mother was seated with a black drape ‘hiding’ her while holding the baby. In this case it’s hard to distinguish, but I think that’s mom in the background and I don’t think the adult was cut out to focus on the child.

  2. In the picture of child holding the book, it resembles pictures of deceased children…something about the eyes. They often had pictures taken with the mother hidden in the background.

  3. I wonder, too, how many of these images are persons who are actually deceased. This seemed to have been a practice many years ago. Sometimes the hands that steadied the person, were actually holding them upright, so they wouldn’t fall over. Furthermore, it was difficult to keep whiggly children still for photos then; the cameras took a long time to capture a still image.

  4. Beth Tillery Greene who does this look like?

    1. That is most likely a boy too as all children wore dresses then.

  5. It’s not uncommon to see very young boys wearing dresses in old photos. In their early years, both boys and girls were dressed the same in the 19th Century.

  6. As recent as the 1930s parents would dress both boys and girls in hand me down clothes boys in dresses and girls in trousers for pictures what ever they had on hand or could borrow that would fit the child.

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