Carte de Visite: Brother and Sister.

I have a Carte de Visite for today’s offering.  There is an older female and younger male.  At first I puzzled over whether or not it was a mother/son pose or sister/brother pose.I decided it was sister/brother as her hair is down and the vast majority of married mothers wore their hair up in public…especially during the day time.  I could be wrong though.  May be she was the boys mom and she considered her hair her claim to beauty and she let it down for the photograph.  Her face is not clear enough to take a guess at her age.

To date the photo by the style of card it has a thin border which was common pre 1868. With the exception of the chair there is nothing else in the photo with the people.  This was common pre 1870.  I wish the girl was standing as the shape of her dress may have given us some clues.  The shoulder seam of her bodice is low which was common in the 60’s but her skirt is not bell-shaped like the 60s.  She does not have the hoops of the 50s and 60s.  This could be a dress that has been remade to reflect the styles of the 70s.

The photographers full name and stamp is on the back of the card.I did find one decent reference to him here.  If you scroll down about 2/3s of the way, it says he was working in Cedar Falls in 1874.    There is not enough information to draw conclusions about how many years, if any, was he working at that location prior to or after 1874.  With these ideas in mind, I will guess this is a late 1860s to very early in the 70s carte de visite.