Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Long Dead Relatives Popping Up Everywhere!

Now I'm sure you'll be thinking I'm just making this all up ... but some mid-C19 relatives might have made an appearance in my study this afternoon!

Actually should I be saying 'yet more' cos, as you may remember, I posted last month on a recently uncovered photograph sent me of two new mid C19 relations:


This is it - today, just before lunch, I was 'dismembering' these two framed colour-tinted etchings to be better able to scan them into the puter.


A kind of current mania with me!


And discovered that their glass backings were in fact silver gelatin on glass photographs!!!

One in quite good condition ...


... and showing (it seemed) a resemblance to my great grandmother (her own mother?) ...


... and the other rather too damaged to make much out ...


My paternal grandmother grew up way out in the bush, well away from towns of any kind. She told me how hawkers would drive round the countryside in horse-drawn 'vans' which functioned as shops selling 'darning wool or strong black cotton ... or new stockings'. She recalled one hawker called Bob, who used to periodically visit the farm 'to stay the night ... do his washing, give his horses a spell and tidy up his shop' (from a story she wrote about a family pet, a Shetland pony).

Last century in the bush, home decorations and ornaments were often home-made.

As a consequence and throughout her life, my grandmother created little framed pictures using images from newspapers, magazines and so on. So I always imagined she or one of her sisters had made these two beautiful little objects - perhaps as girls. And would have used whatever was available for their backing. Though it's hard to imagine she'd have used old family photographs - but equally odd that she'd have had another family's photos to use.

Mmm.

There IS one more piece to this puzzle!

I've just phoned my sister, having earlier emailed her these two images. And she said she had copies of them! In a tiny leather bound book encased in a small leather box. Really!!!

She'd been given them a year or two ago on the death of the executor of my mother's estate - apparently he'd been entrusted to their safe-keeping for some reason.

Such care-taking would suggest (to me) more than just a treasured object. Something of irreplaceable family significance.

Or is does this all have some other explanation? And these are no relations what-so-ever?

I'm waiting for the next chapter to unfold!

And at this rate, it should only be a few weeks!