tassels

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Sitting portraits, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

thats a hell of a dress

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called If pictures could talk, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

At first I thought she was at home, but I wonder if it's actually taken in a studio? Is that a photographer's tripod at the left?

beautiful old pictures.

This image has been used in the indicommons.org post: Krazy Kilts

those are some fine duds they're wearing

I wonder if Scottish boys were usually dressed like that back then ? Or just the wealthy ones ? It's a great picture!

My Grandfather came from Scotland as a baby..I have seen just one picture of him in his Mom's arms on Ellis Island

The Dress Act, forbidding the use of tartan, was passed in 1746 after the uprising, and repealed in 1782. By that time, kilts were not common apparel. These are not traditional plaids, which would have been one long piece of tartan wrapped around them and then thrown over their shoulders. The tartan you see across their shoulders is known as a "fly plaid", and was worn for dress. I expect their parents wanted them in their finery for their entrance into the new world.

Katharine Dexter McCormick (August 27, 1875 – December 28, 1967) was a U.S. biologist, suffragist, philanthropist and, after her husband's death, heir to a substantial part of the McCormick family fortune. She is remembered for funding most of the research necessary to develop the first birth control pill. Notably, her husband does not have a Wikipedia entry (yet)...

She was the granddaughter of Judge Samuel William Dexter, the founder of Dexter Village, MI (about ten miles west of my hometown of Ann Arbor), and the daughter of Wirt Dexter, prominent Chicago attorney and financier. (The Louis Sullivan-designed Wirt Dexter Building, a Chicago landmark, burned to ashes a few years ago.) Katharine's husband was the fabulously wealthy Stanley McCormick of Chicago, a member of the family that invented the McCormick Reaper and founded the International Harvester Company. Unfortunately, Stanley McCormick went mad.

She's also familiar as one of the main characters in TC Boyle's Riven Rock, a novel based on the story of Stanley McCormick's madness and retreat to an estate near Santa Barbara.

episodesandaccidents, Wystan and pennylrichardsca--thank you for identifying Katherine Dexter McCormick. We will add some of these details to the record when we update.