“Most photos of people from the 1800s seemed to show ‘stern’ subjects.”
Two years ago I “stayed” at an old church in Minneapolis during a youth mission trip. They had all the old church photos up on the wall. One was of a women’s group, it appeared to date from around 1890-1900. All of the women had that “stern” expression. Two of them looked absolutely demented. And then I remembered that most of these women probably had nine kids running around their house.