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As photography grew in popularity in the late 19^th century, Americans began to document their lives through photographs. From commissioned portraits of family members to impromptu moments captured on camera, photographs began to be produced in large quantities. Among photographs from the 1800’s that endured, an overwhelming number feature children. While they were popular subjects for photographers, children were vastly underrepresented in written accounts of life at the time. Few children kept diaries and even fewer saved childhood journals that survive today. It is therefore difficult to glean an understanding of the lives of boys and girls of the 19^th century from written sources, as historians saw little reason to document youth history.

Photographs, therefore, provide historians today with ample visual information from which we may draw conclusions about childhood in Vermont in the late 1800’s. Because so many American kept photographs of their children as family heirlooms, these primary documents are valuable historical references for contemporary scholars. From these photographs, the American public defines the notion of childhood as it was understood by turn-of-the-century Americans.

The tintype, a style of photography in which an image was developed onto a thin piece of iron, was popular in the United States from 1854 until around 1900. Tintypes were typically black in color until 1870, when a "chocolate" color was adopted.