1902 boots? What do you guys think?

[albatrosdva]

Kinda strange background on these. About 15 years ago when I was in graduate school I was working on a museum project and the original owner of the house was a shoe salesman. What do you do in the early 1900s with old shoes when new ones are bought? Well this fellow threw them in a pile in one of his outbuildings at the farm. No museum needs 400 pairs of worn out shoes so they let me keep a few pairs. I thought the boots had a WWI look to them so I got several pairs. It won't hurt my feelings if you tell me these are civilian shoes but they look an awful lot like the 1902 pattern shoes but with black shoe polish. They are in the condition you would expect them to be in having sat in a barn for 80 years but they are still in one piece even though the 4 hooks on each side have the nasty habit of breaking off. Let me know what you think. The last picture shows a different boot that has the horizontal stitching like the dress shoe 1902 and it is in its natural element before cleaning :-).

[albatrosdva]

last two pictures.