drcy, you raise an interesting issue. One thing I can tell you is that the mount is most definitely an off-white/cream color. Because of its age, I can't tell how white or cream it started, but it is absolutely 100% not gray. Yet you said that it's a gray mount and therefore has to be from the 1870s. When I first sent out pictures of this, people had trouble seeing them. I made sure to send out originals, with no sharpening at all. However, it really was quite difficult to make comparisons. So as I have a pretty good photo app on my phone, I sharpened the pictures. They look nice and clear on my phone. However, I never really thought that they may show up differently on other people's screens. The fact that you see gray when I see off-white/cream (and know that to be the case in person) tells me that I may need to go back to using the originals or fine-tune them on different types of screens.
That said, the rendering may also be affecting the clarity of the images. Also, there are blurs within the photo in key places that obscure some key features unless the picture is blown up and observed very closely. Yes, Niebuhr looks young. But when you blow up the comparison and look very closely, even to the point of following strands of hair, you can definitely see the resemblances.
As for clothing and grooming styles of the period, I post a pic of men's fashions from the 1850s. You can see that the jackets are very similar in style, including the dark band around the jacket collar and the length of the jacket (which can be seen draped over the chairs in which they're sitting in my pic). The ties are also the same. Another interesting thing is that several of the men have beards in the 1862 photo, but not not in mine. Beards came into fashion after the election of 1860 (for obvious reasons), and stayed in fashion through the 1870s (Garfield was the last of the bearded bunch). After that, fancy mustaches were the rage, as seen in the Old Judge set. So yes, the time frame and matches of unique features are consistent with these men being Knickerbockers.
Michael, I did too!! I also just figured that Bobby Valentine was somehow related to Karen Valentine of "Room 222."
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