Photograph: Portrait of Annie Stickney

From Barnum Museum

1870 – 1875 (Date manufactured/created)

Cabinet card photograph of a young woman, identified on the back as Annie Stickney.  The style of dress, hairstyle, and oval format indicates the portrait was taken in the 1870s.  The sitter is wearing a dark dress with a white ruffle inside the neckline. The bodice buttons up the front and is decorated with rows of pleated ruffles and three-dimensional trimming that appears like silk-covered toggles.  The sleeve seam is dropped below the shoulders and the bodice has a looser fit than would fashions of the years to follow.  The woman's hairstyle with its large pile at the crown, and long hair extending down her back was fashionable in the 1870s and it is apparent from women's portrait photographs of that decade that many went to extremes to adopt this "statement" fashion, however difficult it may have been to create and impractical to wear.  This was also the first of two bustle eras in the Victorian period.

This photograph is part of a large group of photos exchanged by fellow performers with Fritz Smith and Kitty Sharpe Smith, circus and vaudeville performers.

Gift of Susan Crozier Fairchild

Accession/ID Number MS-0027-504-002