I‘ve been thinking a lot this week about my immediate forebears in my mother’s family, thought that’s only been intensified by the ongoing project of scanning my mother’s collection of family photos that includes those of both my grandmother and great-grandmother.
Here, in the centre of this trio, is my grandmother, with her mother on the left and her aunt on the right. This was taken at her aunt’s house.
I’m not sure of the year but guessing by my great-grandmother’s appearance I think my grandmother might be about fifteen or sixteen, which would make my great-grandmother thirty-four (my current age!) or thirty-five.
If this were right, the date would be 1934 or 35.
This image below, I think, would be around nine or ten years later. It’s my grandmother, second from left, with my uncle (who was born at the end of 1941), my grandmother’s brothers, and my great-grandmother.
My great-grandmother and her husband were the caretakers at Godley House, at Diamond Harbour, for at least part of the war. My great-uncle at right served in the Pacific. He would be about nineteen or twenty here, I think.
Then today I scanned this image, most curious of all, sliding as it does between family history and colonial iconography.
After the war my great-uncle trained as a missionary and was based in the North Island. I don’t know who these boys are–did he know them from church, or school? They would be about seventy years old now.
I wonder what their lives brought them, and how their aspirations and opportunities might have differed from my great-uncle himself, who grew up in straightened circumstances not that materially different from what these boys might have experienced.
Were their lives as short as his would be?
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Gorgeous photos! Do you think that might be a wee lass at the far right of the last photo?
I think you are right–it was insufficient scrutiny on my part! As well as her white dress, she has fawn-coloured socks. The two lads in the middle have a rather magnificent duo of short-back-and-sides, whereas she might even have her hair tied back.
Talking with my mother last night, she tells me that my great-uncle trained in Auckland, so this photo may have been taken up there.
Oh goodness, my mother taught at Diamond Harbour – I think it would have been just after the war. She loved it there, and has a particular soft spot for Godley House.
DH seems to be a place to which, having lived there, people become passionately attached. I attended a friend’s wedding at Godley House about three-and-a-half years ago. It was a lovely day.
DH is lovely. I grew up there, and still live in the harbour. But there’s a period- 14-18 when young folk are awfully keen to leave!
“…today I scanned this image, most curious of all, sliding as it does between family history and colonial iconography…”
Lovely.
Some family photos contain those awkward recognitions. Whenever I look at old photos of great uncles stuffed into military uniforms, or great Aunts stuffed into corsets I feel more like I’m looking at an illustration in a history book than at some dim, far off limb of the family tree.