Smoking caps?

[major bill]

I was looking at some old Civil War Times Illustrated and came across some odd photos. In the April 1980 is an article, A Vacation By the Sea which has some photos of the 3rd New Hampshire at Hilton Head. I was thinking these must be smoking caps. If they were smoking caps then they either purchased them from the same source or put in some effort to get matching caps. Do I see a Scotish look? I was wondering what other thought or if they had information on the head wear of the 3rd New Hampshire. Sorry about the poor quality of the images scanned from a magazine.

 

[Package4]

Smoking caps were quite popular, as they were comfortable and didn't give the "Hat band" headache that one might get from the tight sweatband and brim of the kepi or forage cap. I purchase a very rare Richmond Depot kepi, that also had a smoking cap I'd to the same soldier, but did not want to fork out the extra for a non-military piece of headgear. I regret that now..........you can see how comfortable they would be in comparison. The knit caps above are called Tams, I believe. Short for tam o'shanter .

 

[major bill]

I will have to do some research to see if the 3rd New Hampshire had a Scottish connection. Perhaps just this one company favored Tams for some reason.