The importance of research, documentation and conservation in regard to objects in museum or private collections cannot be over-estimated. To explain that importance, I’ve chosen to carry out qualitative research on a sample of three items from my family collection. Continue reading The importance of objects as holders of memories – a family scrapbook
Photograph of Myra McCabe courtesy of Carol Roberts from the Iris Cammack Collection. As well as letters, one of the most popular forms of communication between families during the early 1900s was the privately-printed postcard. Postcards were introduced into Australia from about 1875 and twenty years later, the Victorian Government gave permission for privately-printed postcards to be used under the conditions that they be made of ordinary cardboard, measure no more than 13.3 x 8.3 cms and nothing except the address, stamps and a brief message could be included. From 1898, the NSW Government Printing Office released a series of … Continue reading Picture postcards and family communication
Mary Ann Clarke was one of fourteen children of convict Robert Smith (John) and his wife, Margaret (Hartley). Convicted of horse stealing at Bristol Assizes, Smith arrived in the colony in 1827, aged 21. In the 1828 Census he is listed as labouring for the shipbuilder, John Grono, and in 1835 married Margaret, the daughter of David and Elizabeth Hartley and grand-daughter of Grono. (This photograph of my great-grandmother, Mary Ann Clarke, is in my private collection. The items surrounding the photograph all belonged to Mary Ann Clarke and are also in my personal possession.) In 1869, one of their … Continue reading Mary Ann Clarke: a convict’s daughter who married a convict’s son
Recording Hawkesbury history 