The following is an excerpt from the upcoming issue of Family Chronicle...

Much Ado About a Hairdo?

According to Maureen Taylor, your ancestor's hairstyle can help you date your old photograph

So what can a hairstyle tell you about an ancestor? Plenty. A hairstyle is one piece of evidence that helps you date an image. While there are many different hairstyles in a decade, it’s still one of the tools in your family history photo toolkit. It’s all about examining the details — the hair or beard style, their age and the historical context in which they lived. Hair has been linked to death, divorce, drama and politics. Combing and styling one’s hair or trimming a beard isn’t as simple as you might think. We obsess about our hair and so did our ancestors. Hair and beard styles also tell us about a person’s fashion sense.

There are at least three stages to looking at a family photograph — dating, identifying and interpreting. The first one is straightforward. You look at the photographic method, research the photographer’s work dates, examine the costume clues and study your family research to ascertain a time frame for an image. Each piece of this analysis will hopefully add up to not only a date, but identification. Interpretation is a little less clear. What can you intuit from looking at the image, the person depicted and the details in the photo? Well, sometimes a lot and sometimes a little. It all depends.

Clothing styles and accessories, for instance, can tell you a little bit about the individual. If they are wearing very fashionable and current clothes then they are conscious of the trends popular in that moment. If someone wears a simple dress that’s a little out of date, then you can suppose that the family either wasn’t aware of or weren’t able to afford the current fashion or the person was a conservative dresser. But of all the details in a picture, it’s hairstyles and facial hair that offer the most interesting insights into a personality and lifestyle.

In this 1840s photo of a young woman wearing a small cross necklace, her clothing suggests a special event and her hairstyle confirms it. It’s an elaborate style with front sections curled, looped and puffed (photo on this page).

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