Gazing into space and time: who were these people?

Our Sepia Saturday prompt this week is a cabinet portrait or carte de visite, in which the gentleman is adopting a pose that was quite popular with photographers of the period. The card below shows a lady in a similar leaning pose. It comes courtesy of my distant half cousin Kim in New Zealand. This photo and the others I've included were taken in Christchurch New Zealand by photographers Grand and Dunlop, who operated there from about 1875 to 1887. There is some interesting information about Grand and Dunlop in a blog about early New Zealand photographers

together with a number of their photographs showing subjects in poses very much like the ones I have from Kim. The question of course is, who are they? The only one of the set that we believe we've identified so far is Margaret Nancarrow nee Paterson, who emigrated to NZ in 1861 with her parents and siblings. Two more daughters were born after the family arrived in New Zealand. It could be that the other four photographs are of Margaret's sister Mary Shaw and their three Scots born brothers John, James and Alexander.  If this is the case, the first rather weary looking lady could possibly be their mother Mary Anderson, who was my 2 x great grandmother and would have been in her mid fifties in 1876.  Mary was previously married to another Charles, Charles Forbes, with whom she had already produced five children, the youngest of whom was my great grandfather. I think having borne 12 children would be enough to make anyone look care worn!

                                          

Margaret Nancarrow nee Paterson

The problem with my theory as to the identity of the lady above is that I am reliably advised that the photograph below is definitely of Mary Paterson nee Anderson, previously Forbes. So I'm not convinced that this is the same person as in my first photograph above, but whoever that lady was, she matches the prompt. Other Sepians have likely also found matching photographs from a similar time period, as you may discover if you read their posts at Sepia Saturday #380.

My 2x great grandmother, Mary Paterson nee Anderson, born Deskford, Banff, Scotland 1821, died Amberley, Canterbury NZ 1899 

                              

Who were they?

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt shows two little French boys, survivors of the Titanic disaster. At the time the photo was taken, their identity was unknown, but publication of this photo and others resulted in them being identified by their mother in France, after their father had taken them away from her with the intention of emigrating to America.

Here is a photograph of two sweet little sisters, dressed in identical check print dresses. The younger child is holding what looks like a pull-along toy of some kind, and the older one is possibly holding a small bag. The photo appeared in an old family album given to my cousin Kim in Christchurch NZ. She and I are doubly related, through my 2x great grandmother Mary Anderson being her 3x great grandmother through Mary's second marriage to Charles Paterson, and my 2x great grandmother Jane Paterson being her 4x great aunt. Hence we have quite a few relatives in common, but despite this we don't know who these two little girls were. We can surmise is that the couple in the following photograph were very likely to have been their parents, because the studio background is the same and they were consecutively placed in the album. Unfortunately we don't have a date for the photographs but they are likely to have been taken in the 1870s or 1880s. I have a similar old family album originally given to Frederick Young in 1881, and although it doesn't contain these two photographs, I was wondering whether they could be Frederick's sisters,  my great grandmother Jane Isabella Young and and her little sister Mary Euphemia. They were born in NZ in 1860 and 1862 however, so they were probably a little old for the photograph to be of them, even though the father in the photograph does look rather like my 2x great grandfather Charles Young, father of Jane Isabella, Mary Euphemia and Frederick, and husband of Jane Paterson.

Could these older girls who are also wearing matching clothes be the same children? I believe they may be Jane Isabella and Mary Euphemia, mentioned above

I'm fairly sure that this is a photograph of Jane and Euphemia's parents Charles and Jane Young (nee Paterson).

There were two other sets of sisters who are possible candidates, namely Elizabeth and Rachel Nancarrow, born 1876 and 1878 respectively, and Leah and Mabel born 1885 and 1888, daughters of Michael Nancarrow and Margaret Paterson, who was a daughter of Mary Anderson and her second husband Charles Paterson.Unfortunately I don't have an identified photographs of these sisters. I do have a photograph of their father but he doesn't look like the same man as the father of the little girls.

So sad to say, unlike the little boys in our prompt, I can't identify who these two little girls were with any certainty. Perhaps publishing their photograph here may help.

For more blogs on this week's topic,

be sure to have a look at Sepia Saturday #313