Last week I posted a photograph of a 1909 marriage from my mother's father's side of the family. Here is another photograph from the same time period, this time from my mother's mother's side. The bride was Elsie Pearl Young, a daughter of my great grandmother's brother Charles James Young, and her sister Nellie McKellar Young was her bridesmaid. Incidentally 17 year old Nellie is the cousin who forty years later was to pen a lovely letter to my grandmother describing my parents' wedding day, which I've blogged about previously and referred to in my first post for this month. I've included last week's photograph below, so you can compare the two. To me the styles of both fashion and wedding photography seem very similar in both pictures, with the parties either standing or sitting bolt upright and looking very solemn. Bridesmaids Nellie and Margaret are each wearing similarly large floral hats.
Sadly this marriage did not last very long, because poor Elsie died less than 12 months later, just a few days after giving birth, on 2 July 1911, aged just 24. Her baby daughter Elsie Ellen Cameron survived however and was raised for the first 3 years of her life by her grandmother Mary Ann Young and her aunt Nellie in Church Bush until her father remarried.
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Wedding of Elsie Pearl Young and John Cameron on 18 August 1910 at St Paul's Presbyerian Church Kaiapoi NZ (marriage notice published in the Star, 20 September 1910, per Paperspast)
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Unfortunately there does not seem to be a description of this wedding in the social pages.
John Cameron remarried in 1913, his second wife being Louisa Forrest. I obtained this photocopied and annotated photograph of his first marriage from a fellow genealogist in Christchurch called Robert James Forrest, a descendant of Louisa's brother. We were not actually related, but Legacy helpfully spells out how we are doubly connected, namely that Bob was (1) my 1st cousin twice removed Elsie Young's husband's second wife's great-great nephew, through Louisa, and (2) my 2nd great-grandmother Jane Paterson's niece's husband's 2nd great-grandson, through a second marriage of Louisa's father to that niece, Annie Jeffrey. It sounds complicated, but it meant that Bob had done a great deal of work on our various interconnected families. He very kindly shared with me many records and other information that he had gathered about the Young and Paterson families and others.
Thank you Robert James Forrest,1952-2010. RIP.
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| Wedding of Frances Morrison and Raymond Horn, 29 December 1909 in Wellington NZ: see A pretty wedding |
For more blogs on the subject of love and marriage or not as the case may be, click here to be transported to Sepia Saturday #342.
9 comments:
Those are some complicated relationships you have. How wonderful to have a collaborator when sifting through all the information. Nellie's pose is different—she seems unconnected to the rest of the party.
Yes Nellie seems to be gazing off to her left with a rather wistful expression. She was six years younger than her sister and didn't marry until she was forty. I'm in contact with her daughter Beulah.
What a sad ending to the marriage, but not unusual in those times. Nell does look rather fed up with that pose, but perhaps that was the style then, as I have a number of similar photographs - shown in my first contribution to this month's prompt.
How lucky to have a family wedding photo from so long ago.
Yes, I see what you mean. Perhaps it was at the photographer's suggestion.
Obviously John Cameron's brother was his Best Man. They almost appear to be identical twins? Is there any further information about them?
The brother's name was Donald and he was a year younger than John. I don't know any more about him but I agree, they do look very similar.
It’s a wonderful photo but so sad that the bride died after childbirth, something I touched in in one of my posts this month.
It is a beautiful photograph and very sad that the bride died so soon. I hope the surviving little baby had a good life with her grandmother and step-mother.
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