Dates for Bertha and old lady please

[sherro47]

I was hoping that yet again the wise members of this generous group may be able to help me with dating two final photos in my Hughan collection. The first is my great-great grandmother, Bertha Hughan, born 1839...she had the pale ice-blue eyes of all of the nine Hughan siblings. I have always wondered why it appears that her dress is unbuttoned from the top...I have never seen this done before. The photo is not a cdv...like many of the others it was tightly rolled and printed on thin albumen paper.
  The second old woman was the same format...I really have no clue whatsoever re. date- to get it within a decade would really help to narrow down who she may be. She has a very strong family resemblance to the Hughan children, but their mother died in 1860, so I think it is out of the question that it may be her.

[Billiegirl]

The rather full skirt on the first one makes me think 1860's/early 70's, maybe a riding habit. Terrific photo 

[sherro47]

Thanks, Billiegirl...my "guesstimation" was c. 1863-65, but I am notoriously hopeless at this type of thing, even when I have my reference 'dating old photos' books open in front of me! She married in 1865, and I have a photo of her in c. 1867 with her first baby, and she looks older than in this photo. I was trying to see if there is a wedding band, but it is impossible to tell. It may very well have been a riding outfit- she spent the 1850s and half of the 1860s between Melbourne and a big sheep run on the Murray River near Swan Hill- I imagine that a decent part of her time would have been spent on a horse!

[Billiegirl]

I don't know why, but when I first saw it, I thought "Australia, gold rush". There's a certain colonial swagger about it!

The second photo of the sweet old lady looks to me to be 1880's/90's, but as someone else said sometimes older ladies wore fashions that belonged to their day.   

[jim1]

Love the first one.
Originally an ambrotype with this being a reprint from it. Ambrotypes came out in reverse & you can see her bodice appears to be fastened on the wrong side, so you would have to look for a wedding ring on her right hand.
I would suggest 1850's as she has that large extended corset of that period rather than the more slender 60's style, also she has ringlets which were a favourite amongst younger women but went out of fashion by the 60's.
It is unusual to see a bodice open like this but there were bodice styles that were open at the front  revealing the Bertha so it wouldn't have been regarded as decadent.
I can detect a ring but it doesn't look like a wedding ring more like an engagement ring.
This is how she would have looked at the sitting.
The 2nd. is mid-late 1880's but that depends on how fashionable she was so may be up to 1890.

[sherro47]

Thank you so much to Billiegirl and Jim for the date on the older lady...as I thought, Bertha's mother is not in the running for the subject, so I'm wondering if it could have been a sister- Bertha still had 2 sisters alive in the 1890s, born 1823 and 1824, who would have been aged in their mid-sixties- I wonder how old the mystery lady is?
  Jim, I am absolutely thrilled with the information you provided on the photo of Bertha-thank you! She became engaged in 1862 and married 1865- if she was wearing an engagement ring, perhaps she was wearing an outfit somewhat dated by several years...there was not the sort of wealth in the family for the daughters to be up to date in the very latest fashion trends. Thank you also for reversing the image to display how she would have appeared to the photographer- I didn't know about this characteristic of copies from ambrotypes.
  I'm glad that Bertha wasn't decadent re. her buttoning habits! I always considered it strange, especially since a photo of her very respectable married elder sister, Jessie McCallum, taken prior to her death in 1865, shows her with all of her buttons undone (see attached photo)

[jim1]

I suppose it was a cheap way of being fashionable.