One thing you see in pictures are laced leather boots that came up to mid calf. I briefly wore a pair of my father's from that era. One interesting aspect was that they had slick leather soles, a rather bad feature.

Other than that, they weren't too bad and the quality of the leather was excellent. Offhand, I'll bet people took good care of the boots and applied dressings to keep them relatively waterproof.

If I am not mistaken, the LL Bean shoepac, the type with the rubber lower boot, dates from around 1910. Climbers and loggers wore boots with nailed soles, which must have been a little rough when worn indoors.