OT- Strange old photo of three cow boys from Kansas?

[B-lever]

Might be a well-to-do family from overseas traveling around the the US. The 3 boys dressed up to amaze their friends at home.

[shdwlkr]

notice how the two with the pistols are holding them, don't know of any cowboy who would hold his pistol that way not even in a picture and yes the shirts just seem wrong and how many clean shaven cowboys do you know, ones I have seen always seem to have a day or two of growth. You know working cows isn't a sit at the desk type job.

[Beaker]

Hey Rocky, why dont you just ask Mr. Peabody who those guys are?

[765x53]

In western Missouri and eastern Kansas, Peabody means coal. I say, eastern European miners.

Welsh or Irish...

Mayhaps they got seperated from Oscar Wilde's traveling circus...???

(if there were ever young men who defined "fish out of water," it would be those three...)

More like Croatian or Armenian. They don't call Southeast Kansas "Little Balkans" for nothing.

[Buck Elliott]

Who knows...?

Maybe, if the photographer handed me a little dinky pistol like the guy on the left is holding, just to have my picture made, I might hold it just the same way... or not...!?!

My gut still tells me it is just a trio of wide-eyed wonders -- fish out of water -- who wanted to win friends and influence people back home -- wherever home may have been.

Their eyes tell as much about them as anything in the picture. Clothes and props are all studio issue, but those eyes, are the real window to their being, full of "new" and empty of experience.

By the mid 1880s, long hair had pretty much gone out of style, among the general populations of the West. Always in the way of a man's work, and way too much trouble and upkeep for hard-working folks.

Just another 2-cents worth...