Help dating a photo please

[Michael]

Have been going through some of my dad's old photos - this was the only one he couldn't identify. Can anyone estimate a date please?

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fWb8N_LGbYSz0bQOOSh-IBl-7pw88XDd80iP97QgeEF7lJEB4qgp2fTpElOvyVKgWqZ0uOpDbU dUyiQdS55DCCAj7fyFPpTDtbx2u6DGQL5lrGkolU6-stf6BxQkaCeAh3JOTaCEuXx-_kn8L9HGpy124YAjK6_MDhTRrO0DkxHsP-IyXpoYhBb2IwMaE2GSkGtA8yW5VT3PpsXQwkwWuUw0o3xlDgjG O8yUOCkp_cM48UQcp5Of2oS-1lKbFDQ3TMKdAE1i58xoby8tTncYh7TeswZeMYpIqDb6D4Cb4T u70O6Lot_3IkqAvMQrx53WtgdGqmwrMSU2Uph8uzgBi5rHzbY-QDa8oDSeO1hJyR7wO4OcBGxHZ2NS9mTixsnp6VJCD2uwHDiyz6 SazqEQ7blRl8A91BHHDhCGAj-ejIEUmuCKADe0mUHEBqMyvsuICVZWsPTpkAcX9PtH4ieVVMFzC EF7NlhZ8BVVxySiML_7j_UeLVh5kRUzeO83Hl1_LWHOtRuVVGe Cb3B7RTtNrfxdGvltgLlamauU_7DakvdX4MRNUSebgtqe4hLCB QtI3MPZERDQv8XDeNcyj7cXzZCbmgK7ncv_l73T_ac1qNqukKr zh32EvhyA3mvRciT1WKSjuTZ-GLGbFJq06X9b8kd7F1gOUYhgw2Hfn4rhS3DpYasYOyBtULhaD0 Gu=w560-h943-no?authuser=0

[Merry]

No image!!

[Michael]

It's displaying fine for me, not sure why it shouldn't be for you!

Can you view it via this link (https://www.dropbox.com/s/xcm2x5idnolum6i/07.jpg?dl=0) instead?

[Merry]

How odd - there was literally nothing to see for me in your opening post - no image and no link or anything.

Anyway, yes thanks, the dropbox link works for me. A little difficult to date little children as their clothes don't change so much with the passing years. I see the photographer is Williams & Williams - is there anythng more on the back of the photo?

[Merry]

I suppose the rustic bench makes me think pre-Edwardian, but actually they seems to be used in every era!

If there is info on the reverse about the different branches of the company open at the date the image was made, you might be able to work something out from this list:

https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/Occupations/VicPhoto1

[Michael]

Thank you. Guessing that it's most likely to be one of Dad's direct ancestors, his parents were born 1903 and 1904, grandparents all between 1879-1881. Great-grandparents were c1845-1858 (don't have exact dates for all of them), but it seems unlikely the photo is that old.

Unfortunately I don't have the original photo (Dad probably still has it somewhere, but whether he'd be able to find it on request is another matter!) - just the scan. I see from that link that Williams and Williams were based in Newport and Abertillery, which makes it slightly surprising that the family would have used them as they mostly lived in or near Ystradgynlais, which isn't particularly close to either of those. Two other photos in the same set also bear company names - H. Chapman of Swansea and Cartwright of Ystradgynlais, both also on the GENUKI list and neither close to Newport!

[Phoenix]

The style of the mount is (I think!) Art Nouveau. I would guess that would place it as early 1900s.

This little girl https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StateLibQld_2_179467_Portrait_of_Marjory_Brys on_as_a_little_girl,_Queensland,_1900-1910.jpg has a similar cape-style collar to her coat, though I think your photo may be a little boy, given those boots. Doesn't your father know?!!

[Mary from Italy]

How odd - there was literally nothing to see for me in your opening post - no image and no link or anything.

Same here, it's not just you.

[Janet]

I thought it might be a boy as well because it reminds me of the photo of my father about the same age in his little sailor suit with skirt and fancy hat, and the time frame would be similar to what you suggested, Phoenix, as Dad was born in 1901.

Michael, have you played with the face-matching feature on familysearch that Tom posted about? You'd want to put this photo as "You" and then upload other family photos to compare. It's not foolproof, but I did a lot of fooling around with it and was suitably impressed with some of my results.

It's under Activities > Compare-a-Face.
https://www.familysearch.org/discovery/compare

[Michael]

Thanks, Phoenix and Janet. Early 1900s would make it plausible at least chronologically that it's my paternal grandfather (b1903), but I don't think it is - from a comparison to two which Dad has confirmed are of him, he definitely had bigger ears than the child above (a trait which has been passed on to Dad and me!). He was an only child, so if the above photo isn't him, the next possibility is one of Dad's mother's brothers. I'll have a poke around with Compare-a-Face and see what I get...

[Phoenix]

Have just found this, dated as 1906: https://pastonglass.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/baby-its-cold-outside/


I have just realised that the coat does up the same way in both photos. Were baby clothes uni-sex??

[Merry]

I expect baby clothes were made for the benefit of the mother when it came to buttons. Most mother's would be right-handed so placing the buttons "for a girl" would possibly make things simpler.

I remember my mum angsting over this when I was a child, because she was an expert knitter and often made layettes for mothers-to-be (always 2ply, always white!) - she said when she was younger she would always make the buttonholes "the girls way" because it was easier for the mother (assuming righthandedness), but she felt that in later years this had become frowned upon for baby boys, so she would knit both bands with buttonholes and then wait for the sex of the baby to be announced before sewing the buttons to the "correct" side, hiding one set of buttonholes.

[Phoenix]

Ooh, thanks, Merry. The trouble with the past is that we don't know what we don't know. Mum used to get so irritated by dramas set during WW2. "They didn't wear their hats like that!" ended up as asynonym for historical inaccuracy for any kind.