Early Images

These are two images of some early ancestors of mine. They were taken using a light to project the image onto a screen and then filled in. Both were taken before the more popular method at the time, the daguerreotype, was widely used.

The first image is of Anne Catherine Wilson. She and her husband John Alexander Wilson and their two children travelled to New Zealand in 1832 to become missionaries. They had two more children in New Zealand and in 1838 Anne died, we think of breast cancer.

Anne and John Wilson were my Great Great Great Aunt and Uncle.





Her sister in law, Maria Williams Wilson,(the second image)was asked to journey out from England and help to look after the children. No doubt, being the only sister of John, and an unattached female, she was told it was her duty to come and help. She arrived in New Zealand in 1939 and accompanied her brother and the children to mission stations in Tauranga and Opotiki.

In 1843 Maria married Henry Tacy Kemp, eldest son of the missionaries James and Charlotte Kemp of Kerikeri.

Maria and Henry were my Great Great Grandparents.

Sadly there is little oral history that has been passed down in our family about her. She is remembered as a kindly woman, she spoke French, and was very homesick for England. She never ever returned there.

We are lucky though as many letters written by both ladies have survived. These give us an idea of what life was like in early New Zealand for the European women.

They had many different things to cope with - firstly the long and sometimes dangerous voyage out here, the lack of the type of housing they would have been used to, the difficulty in keeping the standard of dress that society still demanded of them, coping with sickness and also childbirth in primitive conditions etc.

.....to be continued