muffs

ah...what a portrait...I am always amazed by the quality of such a photographs. beautiful!

I admire the costumes from the beginning of the 19th century !

The animal rights people would have a field day, loads of tail-less pheasants, ostriches, birds of paradise and blackcocks to adorn the hats, minks, ermines, foxes and beavers rendered naked to warm their necks and good calfskin leather for those soft bootees! Having said that this is an excellent shot, very well composed with just the one lady excised from the group (probably too much of a gossip). I'd say there was a lot of jockeying for position in that group????

Swordscookie Oh, absolutely! And I take your point about our feathered and four-legged friends. I was nearly going to add this one to our animal set: 4 Legs Good, 2 Legs Bad...

A number of the ladies are sporting AOH badges. Large groups in a small studio are all ways challenging but to also add large hats!.Mr Poole I salute you sir!.

Wonder how many minks died to make those coats?

That's railroad magnate George Jay Gould (1864-1923): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jay_Gould_I (One of his morbid claims to fame is that he was a victim of the "mummy's curse," dying from pneumonia soon after visiting the tomb of Tutankhamen.) The little girl is probably the ill-fated Gloria Gould Bishop Barker (1906-1943), who would marry twice before drowning in her swimming pool at 37: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Gould The other one is probably Edith Catherine Gould Wainwright MacNeal (Lady MacNeal) (1902?-1937), who also married twice before dying young; her son Stuyvesant Wainwright II (b. 1921) was briefly a Congressman. He's apparently at his sister Helen Miller Gould's 1913 wedding to Finley Johnson Shepard: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Miller_Gould

The fur worn by the children is ermine.

very interesting ... always nice to have a look into the past :)

best shot

She is probably the Miss Bertha M. Furman, active in the suffrage movement, who died in 1930. See NYT of April 19, 1930. query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C07EFDF1638E03AB... She was born in New York in 1861. After women got the vote, she worked for the League of Women Voters. Findagrave site at www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=110041260