Beginners Level Article
Using Photographs, Clothing, and Hairstyles to Understand Your Ancestors
When examining old photographs or pictures of a family member in a historical book or newspaper, have you ever wondered who they were and what their life was like? Clothing, hairstyles, and uniforms are three examples of ways to unlock details about their backgrounds and experiences. These would be considered fashion trends. They can also serve the purpose of dating and sometimes identifying localities of residence. They can also shed light on the following topics that can potentially lead to more information and record sources such as the age of the individual, place of residence, economic status, whether they were an immigrant or native born, and where/why the picture was taken.
You can understand your ancestors by using clothing, hairstyles, and photographs as clues to estimate a photo's date, which helps in identifying individuals. Examining specific details like collars, sleeves, and hair parting can provide strong indicators of the era. Here are some more detailed examples of how this process can work to your advantage in using clothing and hairstyles to identify ancestors.
Dating Photographs
- Clothing details: Look for specific elements like collar styles, sleeve shapes, skirt lengths, and types of fabrics, which changed over time. For example, a center part with hair pulled into a back bun and a narrow sleeve points to the mid-1890s.
- Hairstyles and Mustaches: Note features like a person's hairstyle, including hair parted on the side or center, or a specific updo or hat style, or the type of mustache they had.
- Compare with various online and print sources. Use your observations to compare against online resources like fashion timeline websites to help date the photograph to a specific decade.
Identify individuals
- Narrow down candidates once you can determine an approximate date or date range to help
narrow down the potential candidates who could be in the image. - Look for facial resemblance. Clothing can also help differentiate between individuals,
especially when facial features are difficult to distinguish. - Technology: Tools like Google Lens or facial recognition features in genealogy apps
can sometimes match faces in photos to other individuals in crowds, platforms, or other public gatherings or venues.
Specialized or Unique Clothing
Military Uniforms - Focus on prominent features such as hats, braiding, patches, shape and style of pants and jackets and any props then consult one of the many encyclopedias for military dress. Identifying uniforms is all about studying every little detail from insignia to the number of buttons. There are several different uniforms for various situations such as parade dress, walking-out and field dress.
- Headgear: During the Civil War (1861–1865), long crowned kepis or hats dominated the uniform. However, by the mid-1880s, the hat shape became small and tilted because of changes in military regulations. Plumed, spiked helmets were part of dress occasions from 1872 to 1904. In World War I, soldiers were issued an “overseas cap” once they arrived. Start deciphering the costume clues by breaking the uniform down into pieces and establishing a date for each based on its unique characteristics.
- Shirts and Pants: It can be difficult to tell the difference between uniforms used in the Civil War and those worn post-war because of re-use. Compare your pictures to images in the books listed in the resource section and then add up all your clues—type of image, photographers’ dates, and family information—to make sure they agree.
- Medals or Rank Insignia: Cloth chevrons on the sleeves and shoulders of a uniform and insignia on the collar or headgear signified rank. Starting in 1863, badges or insignia pins worn on the headgear identified the corps the soldier served with. In the Navy, hashmarks (cloth stripes) on the sleeves stand for the number of years of service. A portrait of someone in full-dress uniform would include medals, braids, ribbons, and even sashes, depending on the time period.
Funeral and Wedding Clothing: Men and Women usually dressed in specific ways for funerals. In the case of women, they sometimes continued to dress in a similar manner during a period of mourning.
- Pins and other types of jewelry included hair as a memorial to the deceased. Men wore arm bands and women in full mourning wore dark colors from head to toe.
- Wedding clothing is just as specialized in most cases. Certain accessories are associated with brides, regardless of their dress selection. Veils, flowers, and bows decorated even the plainest marriage attire, and consequently can identify a wedding portrait. Orange blossoms, the choice of Queen Victoria when she married Prince Albert, remained an important decoration for decades. Even men wore small sprigs of blossoms attached to their coats to signify a wedding. According to an etiquette book from 1901, affluent young women could wear their first tiara at their wedding. Economical brides might borrow a veil, since wearing something borrowed is a tradition. Or the veil may be a family heirloom paired with a new dress.
Fashion Timelines - Timelines have always been important in genealogy. The fashion world is no exception. Fashion timelines are a valuable tool in genealogy for dating old photographs and paintings by identifying the clothing styles worn by ancestors. By analyzing details like hemlines, sleeve shapes, and accessories, researchers can compare images to online fashion history resources to estimate the time period, which can help confirm identities or narrow down the possibilities for who is in the photo.
For more information on the topics discussed in this article, please visit the following sources.
Internet
Family History Foundation. Focus is on projects such as digital archiving, document analysis, and creative memory projects, organizing family documents and photos is both an art and a science. 2025
https://familyhistoryfoundation.com/
Cowan, Christa.
Find Individuals in Historic Photographs With Ancestry | Tips & Tricks Virtual Event | Ancestry. 2025 You Tube. 60 minutes.
Do you have a shoebox full of old photos with unknown faces? Join Crista Cowan as she guides you through basics of identification tips for historic photographs for family history. Then, learn how the new 'Search by Face' feature on Ancestry can help you uncover the identities of those mystery people and expand your family tree. Discover how to find the story behind the picture and preserve your family's visual heritage. Connect with relatives through shared historical images. Register now to start identifying your ancestors in historic photos!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd2qZB3NY3U
Crow, Amy Johnson and Maureen Taylor.
Learn About Your Family Photos With the Photo Detective! 2023 You Tube. 75 minutes. Join me Thursday, June 22 at 7:00pm Eastern for a conversation with Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective! We'll be talking about identifying photos and the re-release of her classic book, "Family Photo Detective"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM1suG75cdk LeFreniere, Tina
. How to Identify People in Antique Photography. 2022. You Tube 55 minutes. Related Faces founder, Tina LaFreniere, presents to students at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies during our monthly Student Life assembly. Learn how to use facial recognition in the program she designed to identify your relatives in antique photography.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJiJ8E7AoAE
Lisson, Lisa.
Unlock the Mysteries of Your Family Photos With Fashion! 2024 You Tube. 13 minutes.Ever wonder who those stylish (or maybe not-so-stylish) folks are in your old family photos? Believe it or not, their clothes can unlock a treasure trove of info! Join us as we crack the code of fashion trends throughout history and learn how to date those mystery pics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCXjJuehkI
-----------------. Why Old Family Photos Are Your Best Genealogy Tool. 2025
Knox, Connie and Ashley Moore. Genealogy TV.
Ancestry's Image Recognition (Podcast). 2025 You Tube 12 minutes. In this conversation, Connie Knox and Ashley Moore discuss Ancestry's photo recognition feature, which allows users to identify unknown family photographs using facial recognition technology. They explore the process of uploading photos, the potential for matching with other users' images, and the importance of documenting family history. The discussion highlights the excitement and challenges of using technology to uncover family connections and the significance of preserving family memories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ0mt9NKY04
Knox, Connie and Maureen Taylor. Genealogy TV.
Dating & Identifying Old Photos with Photo Detective Maureen Taylor. 2023 You Tube. 37 minutes. One of the most compelling aspects of family history research is deciphering the stories hidden within our family photographs. Learn how to date and identify your photos in this episode on Genealogy TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCxSljUTO1Y
Rudolph, Nicole.
Mysteries In My Victorian Family Photos: How to Date Fashion History. 2022 You Tube. 35 minutes. If you've inherited a stack of family photographs, or built up your own from antique stores, you'll have wondered what untold stories lie within them. Uncovering them can be as simple as putting dates to the captured scene! So, how do we date antique photographs? With a little bit of basic family history (really just birthdates and a few weddings) I managed to dig up a couple of fun stories about my own family. Thankfully there are some ways to help narrow down a date range pretty quickly. Most importantly, what type of photograph is it? The vast majority will be the type printed on paper and pasted to cardboard. Early daguerrotypes are rare (notable as you have to be at an angle to see the image well), but are likely to be in the 1840s or 50s range. Tin types overlap a bit and run later, but as we reach the 1880s dry plate printing and other advances make photography much easier and affordable. This really is where most collections pick up, with posed studio photos at their peak between 1880 and the 1910s. As cameras become more readily available to laypeople in the 1920s and onwards, the style changes to be images of captured moments out and about, rather than carefully posed in a studio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh2NrlWegO4
Bryan L. Mulcahy
Reference-Genealogy Librarian
Fort Myers Regional Library
11/17/2025