A new arrival in the family has meant that blogging my research findings has taken a backseat in recent months, but with babies on the mind, here is a peek at a sweet little one posed with his mother in the nineteenth century:

Pictured is Hannah Marie (Andersen) Nielsen, wife of Ole Nielsen of Yankton, Yankton County, South Dakota, with her infant son Harry Niels Nielsen.¹ Harry was to be the couple’s only surviving child; a daughter died in infancy.² He was born 25 May 1888 in the town of Yankton,³ only a few months after the infamous Children’s Blizzard; his parents, both Danish immigrants, had married in 1880.⁴ At the time of Harry’s birth, Ole managed a dray line in Yankton, transporting heavy loads in a specially built wagon.⁵ Later, he would take up farming east of the nearby community of Mission Hill.⁶

In this photograph, Hannah, forty years of age, wears a dress with a full skirt, fitted sleeves, and a bodice fastened with no less than a dozen buttons.⁷ A brooch is pinned at her high collar and a flat-brimmed hat atop her head is adorned with feathers, adding an elegant statement to her otherwise relatively simple attire. What appears to be a strip of fabric is wrapped around the palm of her visible hand.

Harry, who looks to be less than a year old, dating this picture to South Dakota’s pre-statehood days of 1888-89, is dressed in a light-colored gown and a snug bonnet. He looks directly at the camera and a belt around his middle secures him to the seat of a baby carriage. The slatted basket is long enough that a smaller baby could lay flat until, like Harry, sitting upright against the fringed backboard would be possible.

I love that a baby carriage is featured here, unlike in any of the other nineteenth century baby photographs in my collection. However, I do have to wonder how practical it would have been at this time and place. While a bustling prairie town in its own right, Yankton was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a particularly urban environment, where a baby carriage might have proven more useful. Was it a prop at the Janousek studio, then, or did it belong to the Nielson family—perhaps a special luxury for a woman who had waited out eight years of marriage for a healthy child?

Whatever the case, this is a charming look at a proud mother and her well-behaved infant striking an elegant pose on the frontier. And, I have to say, the picturesque baby carriages of the nineteenth century were certainly more worthy of studio portraits than those of today!

Copyright © 2017 Melanie Frick. All Rights Reserved.

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SOURCES
¹ Morris Nielsen, “Nielsen, Ole,” in Ben Van Osdel and Don Binder, editors, History of Yankton County, South Dakota (Yankton, South Dakota: Curtis Media Corporation and the Yankton County Historical Society, 1987).
² Nielsen, “Nielsen, Ole,” History of Yankton County, South Dakota.
³ “U.S., Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Records, 1875-1940,” Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 10 January 2017), entry for the confirmation of Harry Nils Nilson, Vangen Mission Church, Mission Hill, South Dakota, 1903.
⁴ Nielsen, “Nielsen, Ole,” History of Yankton County, South Dakota.
⁵ “Ole Nielsen,” in Doane Robinson, editor, History of South Dakota, Volume II (1904).
⁶ “Ole Nielsen,” History of South Dakota, Volume II.
⁷ 1900 U.S. census, Yankton County, South Dakota, population schedule, Volin, enumeration district (ED) 350, sheet 10-B, p. 4632 (penned), dwelling 165/186, family 169/189, Hannah Nielson; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 10 January 2017), citing National Archives microfilm publication T623, roll 1555.