Lucy Cottrell and her charge in Virginia, about 1845 Lucy's dress probably looked much like this in color, a very showy Prussian blue stripe, fashionable in the 1840s and '50s. The daguerreotype of Lucy is in the collection of the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center. A slave whose duty is childcare, she holds her toddler charge in a common pose. Lucy is probably more a prop to keep the baby still enough to photograph than a person, an individual to be recorded and recalled by the people who paid for the photo. However, she is dressed for the photographer in a fashionable striped dress. It's so crisp it looks like cotton. Or her dress might be a wool combination fabric as in this dress from Tasha Tudor's collection. Almost out of the picture, the woman seems to have a nine patch quilt in her lap. We'd like to see more of the textiles--- and of course more about the women's lives. Showing some period prints can bring the photos a little more to life. Unknown woman in a checked apron and a striped floral dress. Florals set in stripes Most of these photos are from online auctions. I've lightened them up to show the prints and the faces in the shadows. Combination wool/silk weave---challis Some women wear more formal wool and silk street dress as in this carte-de-visite. And older women often wear head scarves and something like a uniform. The uniform seems to become more standardized after the war and emancipation when roles, perhaps, were sharply defined in the new era of equality. Many nannies of the 1840-1865 period are dressed in what may have been their working wardrobe, at least when they were showing off the children, say to parents and guests after supper. Skinner auction. Perhaps her best dress. Document print for a repro in my Ladies Legacy fabric collection for Moda, out soon. Child care with flair. This Philadelphia cabinet card looks like a post-war photo but the dress print..... with its wide stripes full of seaweedish vegetation... Sleeves rolled up for work. Did that baby just come out of the bathwater? Short sleeves a practical solution. Missouri Historical Society Dresses one would wear to chase after a toddler. Printed plaids or woven? A printed plaid Someone's hair saved in the metal case Foulards (spotty figures in a diagonal repeat) were quite popular during the Civil War years. Polka dots are a form of foulard. We can hope that pudgy baby is just sleeping but from the look on the woman's face---a post-mortem portrait. National Humanities Center, Photographs of Enslaved African Americans, 1847-ca. 1863 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/enslavement/text1/photosenslaved.pdf