This is Ida Sprecher (her name is written across her feet in this photo) from Lancaster, Pa. she's around 5 years old in this picture. It looks like she might be dressed for a special occasion, there's a little bouquet of flowers pinned to her belt. On the posing chair next to her is a hat with more flowers on it, her hair is arranged in long curls held back with a headband. The back of the photo, by Charles Eberman’s studio, has a revenue stamp which indicates the picture was taken between August 1864 and August of 1866.

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This young woman posed for her daguerreotype portrait in an expertly tailored dress. Its tight sleeves and closely fitted bodice were popular in the last half of the 1840s. That means the art and science of photography was just nearing its 10th birthday when she sat for her picture.

Historical images offer us an interesting method of considering what people wore in the past. Knowing what the general trends were in clothing, from fashion plates and surviving garments, we can date and picture based on what the subject is wearing. At the same time, the apparel worn by people in photos tell us something about that person, and about what real people chose to wear in contrast to the images found in magazines and artwork of the time. Clothing doesn’t just reflect an individual’s choices but popular culture at the time. I thought I would use this photograph to take a look at the fairly drastic evolution of women’s fashionable clothing styles in the 15 or so years leading up to when this daguerreotype was made and say a bit about why that was.

I am well aware that 19th century clothing is a niche interest. Though, I would argue that much of the appeal of shows and movies like Bridgerton, Outlander, all of the various Jane Austen interpretations, and even the OG of costume dramas, Gone With the Wind, is the costumes. Of course, the clothing in these productions are truly costumes - part of the storytelling - and thus say something about the modern era in which they were made.

I wager when most people think of women’s clothes in the 1800s the general silhouette is of long skirts and high necklines. Everything gets boiled down to its most basic shapes but in reality, a lot of change occurred during that century. I am only going to look at a small part of that time period, from the 1830s to the 1840s.

This 1831 English fashion plate labeled “Walking & Evening Dresses” shows the extreme fussiness of fashion at the time. Women wore separate sleeve puffs, stuffed with down or cotton or wool, resembling children’s water wings, to support large leg o’mutton or gigot sleeves. It wasn’t the first time these sleeves were part of popular fashion and it wouldn’t be the last. In this application it helped accentuate the slope of a woman’s shoulder which was considered an attractive, feminine attribute. Paired with a bell shaped skirt, these sleeves also made waists appear smaller. Another thing I want to draw your attention to is the length of the skirts in this plate. You can see that they don’t touch the ground but are at ankle length or even a bit above that. Though women’s skirts were long for much of western history, it doesn’t mean they always touched the ground.

Now let’s look at a fashion plate from just five years later (below). In this 1836 image of a walking dress and an evening dress, you see the volume of the sleeves are starting to move lower down on the arm. Bodices are lengthening a bit, to slightly below the natural waist, and the skirts have dropped to the tops of the shoes. The 1820s through the 1840s fell in the middle of the Romantic Era (1800-1850). Art, literature, and clothing all reflected the interest in the natural world, there was an emphasis on drama and emotion. You can certainly see this influence in the clothes here.

Six years later, in an 1842 image from Godey’s Ladies Book, (below) we can see there was change coming. Headwear, instead of exaggerated, large brimmed bonnets of the 1830s, the brims here are much closer to the face. The hairstyles have lost the architectural features seen in the first fashion plate, and curls are lower and sit on the cheeks. Fullness in the sleeves has moved to the forearm, bands or rows of pleats hug the upper arm. Waistlines are well below the natural waist, some sitting at the top of the hipbones.

Finally, we approach the timeframe of our daguerreotype. This Godey’s “Americanized” French fashion plate from 1848 is a far cry from the exuberance of the 1831 plate. Sleeves are fitted tight to the arm, usually cut on the bias of the fabric to allow for stretch and thus enabling the dressmaker to make them as snug as possible. The waists of the dresses sit low, at the top of the hips, just as we see in the photo. The length of the bodice is accentuated by decoration or, in our case, a row of closely spaced buttons. That and the sleeve caps are the only ornamentation on the dress. Fashion historians describe this change as reflecting the rise of the Gothic Era, sometimes called Dark Romanticism. This is when Edgar Allen Poe’s works The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Raven were published. Paintings and drawings of the natural world that were popular in the earlier part of the century, started to feature crumbing castles and ruins among the trees and along streams. Restraint was the byword in dress.

There is a lot more to say about fashion, romanticism, and the gothic - whole books have been written about them. I hope this very brief peak helps illustrate where this woman’s clothing fits within the larger picture (pun intended) of 19th century culture.

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This is young Willard Kimball Clement. His full-length portrait was taken September 11, 1868 when he five years old. He wears clothing typical to little boys in the 1800s, his trousers are attached to his shirt with buttons. This arrangement was the step between the dress worn by infants and toddlers and the suspenders or braces worn by older boys and men. He holds in both hands a long stick or pole. You can’t tell me that he didn’t try swinging it around, knocking over things and hitting people. He is not balancing on a high wire but it appears that he is standing on a table with a photographer’s posing stand behind him.

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I mentioned last week as photographs got more affordable, people were able to use them in different ways. That could include more casual poses or even staging a comic picture, like this one. This image is a half plate tintype, a little over 3 inches by 4 inches, taken in the last half of the 1860s. Clearly the group was going for a humorous group portrait. They all are doing their best to look serious but once you see the women’s hats on the men’s heads, you know they are joking around. The image warrants a closer look at the details.

Aside from the three young women lending their hats to three of the men standing behind them, it looks like the men have traded coats, the shorter guy’s coat of light-colored fabric and dark trim looks like it matches the man waistcoat of the man on his right. The same fellow, on the far left, holds a pipe in his mouth. The two women on the left wear dresses made of the same fabric - a pretty common thing to do among sisters or best friends at the time. The young woman seated in the center holds an umbrella. I don’t think it is a parasol because most parasols at the time didn’t have long finials but umbrella’s did. The woman on the far right has a knit scarf wrapped around her neck and tucked in her belt. Could it have belonged to one of the men? She also holds one of the fellows’ hats. Speaking of hats, if you look carefully at the women’s hats on the men, you’ll see they are all the same under the decoration.

I date this image to the latter half of the 1860s based on a few attributes. The brass mat is thin and highly decorated. By the 60s mats were being made of a thinner gauge of brass than in the two decades before and decoration tended to fill up the space between the photo and the edges. The hairstyle worn by all three young women, with the hair at the temples pulled back quite severely, came into wide popularity around 1865. Their hats, though on the larger heads of the men, are quite small which was a trend in the last half of the decade and continued into the 1870s. The men’s waistcoats represent the variety available throughout the 1860s The man on the left wears a collarless version with small metal buttons, the young man next to him appears to have on a military vest with a standing collar and metal buttons, and the tallest fellow, with his arms draped over the others, shows his waistcoat with a notched shawl collar.

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She looks like she’s appearing to us out of the mists of time. The image is a little fuzzy and could be a copy print or duplicate. The photos that just feature the head and part of the shoulders, much like a sculpted bust, are called vignette portraits and were an option offered by photograph studios. This image was retouched or enhanced perhaps to compensate for the reduced contrast in the photo. Her hair, starting just about mid-forehead was darkened by using thin parallel lines on the right and on the left some darker shading. Her eyes also look as if they’ve been enhanced as well, which gives them a piercing effect.

This is Ann Thomas Blackistone of Leonardtown, Maryland. The pencil inscription on the back of the image includes two sets of handwriting. At the top, in smaller script, is written Ann T. Blackistone, March 7th 1822, Augt 22nd 1863. Below that in larger handwriting is, “My mother about one year before God called her to her eternal home. Your lonely child Ella”

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This is not a pose you see everyday in an 1860s carte de visite. It is a shame the paper is so overexposed that we can’t see what is written on it. I feel like we’re missing out on a joke. One thing this image, and those like it, illustrates is how inexpensive photographs had become by the 1860s. In 1854, French photographer Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi patented the carte de visite. A multi-lensed camera created a single glass plate negative that had up to 10 of the same image on it. The plate would be placed over a piece of sensitized paper and exposed to sunlight which would transfer the images onto the paper. Then the paper would be cut apart and the individual photos mounted onto cards which were often decorated with a border (like you see here) and with the photographer’s name and studio location printed on the back.

Cartes de visite made it to the U.S. by 1859 and by 1860 the phenomena of “cartomania” had taken hold. People got their photos made and traded them with friends and family, actors and performers posed for publicity photos and handed them out to fans, and hundreds of thousands of young men visited studios in their uniforms to get a keepsake for their parents and sweethearts before marching off to fight in the Civil War. Photo albums were invented to hold all these cartes and to show them off. Not unlike social media today, people displayed carte de visite albums on parlor tables with the unspoken invitation for guests to look inside to view whose photographs were inside. A not so subtle way to show off important friends, influential family members, and telegraph social and political leanings.

This photo is of New Bedford, Massachusetts businessman Lewis Shaw Pope. Pope was born in 1813 and married Esther Dillingham Shaw, his first cousin, in 1841. Yes, he and his wife had the same Shaw grandparents. It wasn’t frowned upon to marry your cousin then as it is now. Interestingly, a study in 2018 revealed marrying cousins didn’t fall out of favor until the mid-1870s.

Lewis Pope is listed in census records and city directories variously as a trader, a tradesman, a dry goods dealer and in the 1870s, a “maker of clothing” and a contractor. I think he might have been supplying the merchant sailing industry that dominated New Bedford’s economy. He and Esther had four children; Franklin West died the same year he was born, in 1842, Jeannie Malegena Crandon died of scarlet fever and diptheria when she was six in 1862. Elizabeth Crandon and Abbie Louise survived to adulthood. Elizabeth married George J. Parker a sea captain, and Abbie first married John S. Clapp who was employed in the straw works in Middleborough. In the 1800s, Massachusetts was known for the plaited straw several manufactories produced. It was primarily used for making hats and bonnets. Clapp died in 1875 and Abbie marred Joseph W. Spooner a teamster. Lewis Pope died in New Bedford in 1886.

Popes’s photo was taken at George Francis Parlow’s studio. Parlow was another son of Massachusetts. He was born in Fairhaven, near New Bedford, in 1837. As a teen, in the 1850s, he and his family lived on the same street as Lewis Pope. He married Elizabeth Howland in 1864. Apparently, he wasn’t the only photographer in the family. In the 1865 Massachusetts state census his sister, Emma, is also listed as a photographer. She was 19 at the time, so it is possible she was working in her brother’s studio.

In the 1860s, Parlow took photos of Civil War soldiers as well as community members like Pope. By the 1870s he was a prosperous photographer and continued to take pictures through the end of the 1800s. By the early 1900s, he was a widower and living in Manatee County, Florida. It’s not clear why he moved there since the state had yet to become a beacon for vacationers and retirees. He lived in a boarding house in 1910 and in 1920 was boarding with a family in Tampa. He moved the Masonic Home in St. Petersburg - what was then called an old age home. His 1926 obituary mentioned he came to Florida to take pictures of the Spanish-American War soldiers. He is buried in Royal Palm South Cemetery in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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This curly-coated pup with gleaming fur is doing such a good job staying still for the camera. She looks to be a mixed breed with some retriever or spaniel in the mix. Unless you were a dedicated hunter who focused on the bloodlines of your hounds, focus on pure bred dogs didn’t really take off until the late 1800s. As a result, most of the dogs seen in early images are what some people would call mutts. This ruby ambrotype was taken in Woburn, Massachusetts around the late 1850s. The brass mat has the name of the photographer and location stamped on the lower corners. “Woburn” is stamped on the right hand side and “Wyman” on the left.

Samuel Webster Wyman was born in Woburn, March 23, 1831 to Susan Mead and George Wyman. George was a farmer and Samuel, who also went by S. Webster or Webster or Webster S., as the second son would not expect to inherit the farm. That meant he needed to find an occupation. It appears he tried shoemaking for a few years. He is listed in the 1850 U.S. census and the 1855 Massachusetts state census as a shoemaker. It was not an unusual occupation for someone from the Bay State. Massachusetts was the center of U.S. shoemaking from the 1700s through the first few decades of the 1900s. Wyman must have decided cordwaining wasn’t for him and sometime between 1855 and 1860 he started taking photographs. In the 1860 U.S. census his occupation is Artist, a term often used interchangeably with photographer. The 1865 state census lists him as a photographer and in the 1868 Woburn City Directory (below) his occupation is “photographist.” Sometimes it is easy to forget that photography in the 1860s was less than twenty years old and terms for the person who practiced the trade/art were changeable.

On April 23, 1860, Wyman marred Catherine Lunt and their first child, William Wallace Wyman (called Willy), was born November 25 of the same year. A daughter, Kate Mabel, was born May 26, 1865 and was less than 16 months old when she died of cholera infantum. Called the “scourge of childhood” and also known by its other name “summer diarrhea” it is caused by spoiled food, and contaminated milk and water. Thanks to the pure food laws of the early 1900s, it is now an uncommon illness. The Wyman’s third child, Harry McKenzie, was born August 14, 1875 after the family moved to Ohio. In 1880, they were living in Brooklyn Village, now part of the city of Cleveland near the current Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. That year’s census lists Webster S. Wyman as an “artist” and his oldest son William, who was 19, as a clerk in a wallpaper store. Samuel Webster Wyman died of tuberculosis, then called consumption, on October 4, 1898. His wife Catherine survived him seven years, dying on August 25, 1905. They are buried in Denison Cemetery in Cleveland.

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I never thought I would have an image from Hawaii in my collection. Since the archipelago was not a state in the mid-1800s, the time frame of my collecting scope, I wasn’t looking for a photo from there. The well-dressed little girl sits in a high chair, the skirt of her dress is draped over the arms, her feet on the footrest. We can see the white needlework, called broderie anglaise, on the hem of her petticoat. She wears a pendant necklace and a bracelet that is pushed up to her forearm. It looks like she has striped socks. She holds a cased image open for us to view. It appears to be a photograph, likely a daguerreotype or ambrotype, of herself.

There is a good chance that both the carte de visite and cased image were taken by the same photographer. On the back of this image is the name H.L. Chase. Henry Lyman Chase, is best known for his portraits of native Hawaiians, including members of the royal family, and scenes around the islands. He was born to Mary Richardson and Erastus Chase of Keene, New Hampshire in 1832. At the age of 18, in 1850, he was working as a clerk in Keene. Six years later he emigrated to the Hawaiian Islands and set up a photography studio. He advertised his business regularly in both English and Hawaiian language newspapers.

Chase worked in Honolulu until the 1880s and then moved to Wailuku, Maui. He continued to operate his photography studio on Maui until his death June 1, 1901.

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The dress this woman is wearing is another one I wish I could see in person. Likely taken in the first few years of the 1860s, the bold pattern and contrasting colors would have been eye catching to say the least. The wide, dark edge on her matching jacket is likely black velvet. If you look carefully at her sleeve you’ll see that it is cut in a way that matches the stripes when it lies against her skirt. Here coloring and the lightness of her eyebrows makes me think she had red hair.

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A carte de visite of a woman by Boston photographer James Wallace Black is today’s image. Black took photographs of many well-known people including abolitionist John Brown and Walt Whitman, which makes me wonder if this woman isn’t a known author. She’s posed with a white quill in her hand, poised as if writing in a small book on the table. Next to it is an elaborate, likely bronze, inkstand that includes what appears to be a Greek god. I included a similar one I found on an antiques site.

There are some other interesting things to note in the picture. She wears a white cap or headdress, which is barely visible against the light background and a white dress apron. You can see a corner of her paisley shawl draped on the corner of the chair. She holds her mouth open a bit which is different from the typical closed-lip poses you usually see. Maybe she had a stuffy nose.

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Another thing I like about collecting photographs is finding interesting furniture in the pictures. As photography grew in popularity and accessibility through the 1840s and 1850s, an industry grew around it. Photographic supply warehouses provided studios with everything from cameras, cases, and chemicals to backdrops, reflectors, and posing stands. The adjustable, often fringe bedecked, chair which became ubiquitous in nineteenth century photographs started appearing around 1864. Before that, photographers used whatever furniture worked for them, suited the occasion, or simply was available.

Sometimes photographers used the same furniture in the portraits they took. If it is a distinctive table or chair, it can be used to identify the photographer if there is no other information given. The table this little girl is standing next to is definitely distinctive. The shape of the legs and the curvilinear design of the pierced body indicate that is in the rococo revival style which was popular in the 1850s and 1860s. I was able to locate a similar-looking table which is a European-made worktable that some dealers all a “trumpet table.” The table in this picture is too small to be a worktable and could simply be a local cabinetmaker’s interpretation of a current style trend.

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The bonnet ribbon caught my attention in this ninth plate clear glass ambrotype from around1860. At first glance I thought it was half solid color and half polka dot. Looking closer the spots are not round and are likely some kind of flower or figure woven into the fabric. Ribbons were extremely popular throughout the 1800s. Aside from finding them on men’s, women’s and children’s headwear and decorating women’s and children’s garments. They served a multitude of uses such as pull strings on purses, bookmarks, tying stacks of letters together, making cockades and other political campaign signifiers, to name a few examples. Ribbons were relatively inexpensive which meant, they were accessible to a large portion of society. A woman could change her dress, hat, or bonnet to suit the season, current fashion, or her tastes, for a fraction of the cost of buying something new.

We can see draped over the back of the bonnet a spotted net veil. Veils were rectangular or semi-circular like the one below. They could be a number of colors but the most common was black and white (or natural). Veils were worn by some women to keep the sun off their faces, to protect against the dust and soot of traveling by rail or by coach, or to provide some privacy in public places. They were attached to bonnets and hats by straight pins or sometimes with thread and needle in large stitches so that the veil could easily be removed when unwanted. Mourning veils were usually plain black net with a wide black border. Wearing mourning veils was a custom that persisted in this country into at least the 1960s, in some communities.

She is wearing a cloak or cape that has a plaid body and dark trim. She removed only one of her gloves - you can see the dark, gloved hand holding her ungloved hand. What you may not notice at first look is that she has on a wide necked, possibly off the shoulder, dress. The dark, upper portion of the cloak rests just at the edge of her shoulders.

The other interesting aspect of this photo is the advertising card on the back that looks nearly new. Henry G. Pearce worked as a photographer in Providence, Rhode Island since at least 1858. The card gives us an idea of what he offered his customers and that his studio was open 11 hours a day. The crystalotype he mentions is a salted paper print from a glass negative invented by John Whipple, an innovative Massachusetts photographer, in 1850. At the very bottom of the card, under the edge of the brass preserver it says “Ambrotypes for 25 cents.”

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The scan of this quarter plate daguerreotype looks a lot dustier here than it does in real life. This image appears a lot more distinct in this scan than it does when you are holding it in your hand. That is one of the quirks of daguerreotypes - the photo is on highly polished silver and the reflective nature of it creates what today we would describe as a hologram. The picture will appear or disappear depending on the angle you view it from. The scanner I use is one of a few available that is able to capture the image and balance it with the tones of the brass mat surrounding it. If you want to know more about the technical aspects of early photographs let me know and I will put together a post or two. Now, on to discussing today’s image.

I thought this 1840s daguerreotype of a woman posed next to three potted plants suited the spring season and all the green things waking from their winter slumber. It also helps us think about women and botany. The plants on the table are not run-of- the-mill annuals but specimens native to far-flung continents. The small, trailing plant with variegated leaves and pink-tinted flowers is Tradescantia zebrina. Commonly known as silver inch plant or by the pejorative name “wandering Jew,” it is native to Mexico and Central America. The tall plant next to her shoulder is a Pelargonium. At most greenhouses, plant stands, and big box stores nowadays these plants are called geraniums. In fact, they are in the same family, but true geraniums are plants called cranesbill, which are native to North America. Pelargoniums are native to Africa and Australia. The third plant appears to be Dracaena reflexa or commonly known as Song of India. Today it is a common houseplant and is sometimes used in landscaping in Florida and other subtropical areas. It is native to Madagascar.

Mention of all these plants and many more can be found in Jane Loudon’s book Botany for Ladies published in London in 1842. Loudon’s book was not the first botany text directed at women. Since the late 1700s, many educators and scholars in England and America considered the study of botany and horticulture to be particularly suited to women. Books published in England, like Letters on the Elements of Botany Addressed to a Lady (1771) by Jean-Jaques Rousseau, and Pricilla Wakefield’s An Introduction to Botany (1796), laid the groundwork for an increase in women’s participation in this branch of science.

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What an outstanding vest and trouser set this fellow has and something makes me think that this is why he had his picture taken sometime in the first half of the 1860s. Men’s fashion at the time provided and opportunity for “mix and match” dressing. Changing up vests and sometimes even trousers to suit (no pun intended, or was it?) the occasion or sartorial preferences. Often these pieces were still paired with a solid colored frock coat. Like you see here. Having a matching vest and trousers in such a large check, really makes a statement.

The vest is double breasted with little dark buttons and two pockets and there’s contrasting dark piping around the edges. The trousers feel a bit short to me but it may be just the lighter color against the dark of his nicely polished shoes. The fabric for both is a twill weave you can see that if you look closely in the lighter areas next to the darker checks. He wears a cravat at his neck and the standard white shirt. You can see that he dressed his curly hair with some kind of oil or pomade. I also think he is a working class fellow or possibly a farmer by the looks of his hands. The photographer’s studio is interesting too, the plinth and Grecian urn are there for effect, there’s a large tassel and drape behind it which could be arranged behind another sitter for a different look, then there are the floor coverings. He’s standing on what’s probably a floor cloth with a diamond pattern but if you look just to the very bottom of the view you can see a different pattern made up of squares. Unfortunately, there’s no back mark or inscription on the back of this photo so we don’t know where it was taken.

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I thought this small, ninth plate (2 inches by 2 1/2 inches) clear glass ambrotype was suitable for the upcoming Easter holiday. The little girl’s blurred hand indicates she was patting the white bunny when the photo was taken. In the 19th century, like today, rabbits were kept as family pets. The most popular pets by the mid-19th century when this photo was taken were birds, dogs, and cats in that order with rabbits, mice, fish and guinea pigs rounding out the list. If you want to learn more about pets in history, I recommend the book Pets in America: A History by Katherine C. Grier.

The history of rabbits or hares and their connection with springtime goes back all the way to traditions among the Anglo Saxons. The month we call April, they called Eostre Month and it was associated with the goddess Eostre whose main symbol was a hare. In what would become England, people combined the old Anglo Saxon traditions with the new Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and called the holiday Eostre or Easter. People in Germany called it Oster. However, in other parts of Europe and Scandinavia, the name for the same holiday derives from words for Passover, Paques in French or Pask in Swedish. This short article from Smithsonian Magazine gives more detail.

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This is a photo that I wish I could see in color. The bold ombré striped shawl immediately catches your eye. Under it, the woman wears a dress of what was no doubt a colorful floral fabric. The image is a daguerreotype likely from the late 1840s or very early 1850s. Her dress and bonnet both have 1840s stylistic elements. Her bonnet is round with bunches of tiny artificial flowers arranged on either side of her face which was the fashion in the 40s. As the 1850s progresses you start to see the decoration, in the form of flowers, ribbons and gathered tulle, filling the brim completely. If you zoom in and look closely, you can see that the bonnet lining consists of two different fabrics, one solid and other striped, arranged in a sawtooth or van dyke pattern. Her dress also has style elements of the 1840s. During that decade the waistlines of gowns dipped below the natural waist and sometimes had a point in front, creating the look of a long, flattened torso. Though her dress is not as tightly fitted as some, you can see the slight point in front and the pleats of the skirt seem to sit at the top of her hips. The volume of the skirt of the dress is also typical of the 40s. It was in the 1850s when the fashion started toward wider and wider skirts, first supported by multiple starched and stiffened petticoats then replaced by hooped or cage crinolines. Like the skirts, sleeves started expanding in the 1850s as well, eventually ending with large, bell-like sleeve openings. The woman’s dress here still has the tight sleeves popular in the 40s. These sleeves were often cut on the bias so that they could fit closely to the arm while still allowing movement.

She holds for us on the table next to her an image of a man. His dark coat, white shirt and dark cravat is easily discernible. Collectors call this type of photo a “PIP” or picture in picture or photo in photo. There are theories about why someone would do this. It could be they want to document a deceased relative or spouse, or a husband absent at sea, at war, or traveling, or simply to include a family member or friend in a photo to record the relationship. The mat does a nice job framing the image. The shape is uncommon and is sometimes called the Alhambra pattern. The absence of elaborate embossing on the mat indicates it is likely note later than the early 1850s. Mats got more elaborate as the decade progressed. If you want to learn more about mats and cases from this era of photography, I recommend the book Fixed In Time by Sean Nolan. It is available in print or as a pdf here .

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You may have noticed by now that my early photo collection centers on images of women, and to a lesser extent children. I do occasionally add a picture of a man to the mix. To be honest, I don’t know why I bought this carte de visite of a gruff-looking fellow. He wears the mid-19th century standard dark, likely black, frock coated suit. His collar is black velvet and it is a nice example of how you can tell velvet from other fabrics even in “black and white” photos. The pile absorbs light instead of reflecting it so looks darker. What I notice is that he is not wearing a colored neck tie that you would expect a man of this era to be wearing. Instead he has on a white stock or cravat over his shirt collar.

This is one of the rare examples of Google Lens helping to identify an image of a previously unknown person. Usually, it returns photos of people who look similar or are posed the same. I got lucky and found among the search results an identified carte de visite of the same man. This is Alonzo Payson Ludden who was born in upstate New York, July 11, 1819. He attended Amherst College and traveled to Stephens City, Virginia to teach school. I’m not sure why he traveled so far for a teaching position but at the time Stephens City had three schools, so it is possible they recruited him. While there he met and married Caroline Grove, daughter of Jane Young and John W. Grove a wagon maker. Stephens City was known for wagon making. In the 1830s, there were 9 shops producing wagons in the small Shenandoah Valley town.

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Two little girls from Illinois are dressed in their starched finest. The fashion of having a large, bell-shaped skirts wasn’t only for women. Girls’ dresses, though shorter, echoed the style as well. Generally, women and older girls wore hooped or cage crinolines to achieve the fashionable large skirt, little girls wore several starched petticoats to hold out their shorter skirts. You can see just how stiff they were in the youngest girl’s skirt that’s belled out to the back as she stands close to the chair. Both girls wear two-strand bead bracelets and the youngest has on what is likely a coral necklace with the clasp in front. I really like her expression. I think she was probably a handful.

While the pose is engaging, the real reason I added this picture to my collection is because it was made by a female photographer. The backmark reads Mrs. W.A. Reed, Artist, No. 81 1/2 Hamshire (sic) Street, Qunicy, Ill. According to Women in the Dark: Female Photographers in the US, 1850-1900 by Katherine Manthorne, Candace McCormick Reed worked with her husband in their daguerreotype gallery in Quincy in the late 1840s. After her husband died in 1858 she went into business for herself. Eventually she opened branches of her studio in Canton, Ill. and Palmyra and LaGrange, Mo. staffed by her brother Wales and sister Celina. When the Civil War started she took time out from her business to work as a nurse in her home state of Tennessee. After the war she returned to her successful studio. Her obituary in 1900, typical of the time, didn’t say much about her decades as a photographer but instead emphasized her charitable and nursing work and her role as mother. Learn more about Reed’s life here .

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A particularly cute little boy from Pittsburgh gives us a little smile. He wears a suit decorated with soutache braid in an elaborate pattern. This type of corded passementerie was popular in the 1860s for children’s clothing and women’s magazines published various designs for sewers to try at home. Under the bolero or zouave-style jacket is a white shirt with a ruffled standing collar. He moved a bit during the exposure which is why his little jacket and hands are blurred. It appears he might be holding a pocket watch by its chain in one hand. What we’re seeing in his other hand is his hat showing the lining in the interior.

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Today’s image is a carte de visite of a family of nine posed outside near what looks like their back door in the early 1860s.You can see a picket fence in the background with several trees beyond that. The portion of the house we see has two widths of clapboard siding which often indicates an addition. A railing and five or six pretty steep steps is to the far right of the image and just behind the family you can see the diamond trellising between the floor joist and ground.

It was unusual to have a portrait taken outside. Cameras at the time were not easily portable. At the time cameras were wooden boxes with lenses held on tripods. The glass plates used as negatives had to be sensitized right before they were exposed. Hence the name wet plate photography. So a photographer would have to have a portable dark room like in the second photo below or a wagon with a dark room built into it.

The gathered group is likely one family, though in the 19th century it wasn’t uncommon for aunts and uncles taking in nieces and nephews or what we currently call the blended family of children from an earlier and current marriage. There’s no inscription or backmark to give us any clues. The clothes the children are wearing are worth noting. The girls all have on a white shirt (called a body in some fashion magazines at the time) and at least two of them have matching skirts with a wide vertical stripe, we can’t see the oldest’s skirt. The girl next to the steps holds a wooden hoop of the kind children played with using a stick to roll along. The boy next to her holds a straw hat in his right hand and wears a the short jacket that most boys wore at that time. The two boys next to the seated woman appear to be wearing matching jackets with tab closures, you see these types of closures on men’s clothes as well. These two look like they might be twins. The woman is holding what looks like a small purse in her lap and wears a light colored silk dress narrow horizontal stripes and contrasting trim. The man in back with the salt and pepper hair is holding the youngest child which appears to be a little girl. The oldest girl and the one with the long curls look like they are each holding a bunch of flowers.

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