Men, children and dogs, at work and at play

My third post on the Sepia Saturday theme for September of Work and Play.

The staff at Robinson's timber mill, Rai Valley, 1904, on the site of the Rai Tavern. Photo supplied by Ross Higgins

Standing, left to right: Paul Clifford, Harry Mortimer, Jim MacLaine ( recently returned from Boer War), Vera Hewetson, Les Hewetson, A.J. Hewetson, Bill Turner, Mabel Hewetson, Dave Wilson, Daniel Morrison, Archie Hubberd ( Stock Inspector. Nelson).

Seated, left to right: Ben Wilson, Billy Morrison, Bill Andrews, Alec Alquest, Alec Maule.

Manager Arthur Hewetson is accompanied by his three children in this photograph, and they might behoping  their father will have time to play with them and the dogs once his working day is over, but there are another couple of family members present here, namely my great grandfather Daniel Morrison and his eldest son, Daniel William, known as Billy or Will. Billy's son Denny kindly shared a copy of the photograph with me. My grandfather John aka Jack Morrison was Billy's younger brother by twelve years.  Their father Daniel Morrison and wife Mary Bridget had fourteen children in total, and Daniel appears to have been an enterprising man who was able to turn his hand to many different jobs during his working life. In an earlier blog posted here, there is a photograph of him at his desk in his last position, as secretary of a local dairy factory. In addition to the various jobs referred to in the obituary also included in that earlier post, Daniel was described as a letter carrier on his marriage certificate and as an accountant on the birth certificate of his first child.

I was very interested to find this second photograph on the web site of the Marlborough Museum, as it is believed to show a group of men relaxing outside the single men's quarters at the same mill. You can read more about the photograph here on the Museum site and can enlarge it on that site for more detail, but I think at least two of the men appear in both photographs, namely Jim MacLaine, standing with his hands on a stick or tool handle, and Bill Andrews, crouching in the doorway with what looks like a squeezebox. It might even be Billy Morrison on the far right, holding either a rifle or some instrument. I'm not sure if it is him, but if it is, I'd like to think it was the latter he was holding rather than the former. He was certainly still a single man in 1904, before he married in 1913 and had ten children with his wife Violet.

An exhibit from Photographs of Marlborough 1859-1909, on Marlborough Museum web site,  photographer James (Jim) Irvin, Junior

For more blogs on Work and Play, click and go to Sepia Saturday #343 

Horses and Holidays

This week's prompt shows some horses being led to drink from a stream. My mother and her immediate family were not horse people, and I don't have any photographs of horses drinking, but here are three horse photographs from my mother's early albums. The first one shows my mother's sister Patricia as a young child in about 1924, tentatively trying out a horse. From the right hand side of the photograph, it looks like this is possibly at a beach somewhere. With Pat is her father Jack Morrison.

This next photograph, entitled "Horse riding at Caroline Bay". It was taken in the early 1930s and shows my mother Jean taking a turn at riding.  Caroline Bay is a beach at the town of Timaru, some two hours south of Christchurch on the South Island of NZ. I think that is Aunty Bess walking beside Jean. Timaru was then and still is a popular beach resort.  Jean and her sister Pat were taken to Timaru by their maiden aunties Bess and Flo Forbes, who always helped their sister Mona Morrison out with her family of six children. They may well have been visiting acquaintances there.

I found the following poem called "Caroline Bay" in the Press of 21 December 1923, in a promotional article describing iTimaru as 'the ltown of Sunshine' and the leading seaside bathing resort of the Dominion. Another article referred to it as the Riviera of the South.

Snipped from the invaluable Paperspast web site.

Here are Pat and Jean perching on a rock overlooking Timaru Harbour on their holiday. This reminded me of my own visit to Timaru in 2013, when I photographed a local fur seal sunning himself on some very similar harbourside rocks.  

Views of Timaru Harbour from the rocks and of the attractive parkland above the beach in 2013:

I particularly like the following photograph, which is simply entitled "A little visitor from Canvastown". Living in the country, this young boy would have been a capable horse rider, come to check out whoever was visiting the Morrison family. Jean visited her uncle Bill Morrison and his family there in about 1947. 

This matching photograph taken by Jean in 1947 is of her Uncle Bill's home, the same little home in which Bill's parents/Jean's grandparents Daniel and Mary Bridget lived and had 15 children, 11 of whom survived.

 Canvastown in Marlborough NZ was the town where Jean's grandparents Daniel and Mary Bridget Morrissey aka Morrison lived, and their son Jack took his family went up there from Christchurch for farm holidays. Daniel and Mary Bridget had settled there not long after arriving from Cork Ireland in 1875 and raised a large brood in a very basic little house. Jean remembered that it had newspapers lining the walls and none of the conveniences of her parents' relatively modern home in Christchurch. Her cousin Valerie Coleman recalled that there was no plumbing or electricity in the house and meals were cooked in black iron pots that hung from iron rods over an open fire place. Mary Bridget worked endlessly to keep the household going. On wash days she drew water from  the hand pump to fill the copper that sat outside in a paddock, and then stoked the fire to boil clothes. A horse story passed down by Valerie's mother Eileen told of how her mother Mary Bridget had said that on one occasion back in the 1880s Daniel had arrived home with no pay from a month's work, and after a 'showdown' revealed that he had called in at a local hotel and apparently had bet his wages against a man called Joe that his pony could beat Joe's in a race. Needless to say Dan's horse lost. Mary Bridget jumped on the pony and rode back to the pub, where she demanded the money back from Joe, who insisted it was a fair bet and fairly run. However after a few arguments he paid up, although not in full.

Here is a photograph from about 1929/30, showing the three Morrison children gathered beside the local river, either the Pelorus or the Waimakarina, with their cousin Valerie, mentioned above. It looks like the same conical shaped hill in the distance.

Jean, Ken, Pat and Valarie

This photograph from another family visit in about 1933/4, shows Daniel and Mary Bridget Morrison at home in Canvastown, with two of their sons, Jack and Stanley, and Jack's eldest three children, Pat, Ken and Jean.  Mary Bridget died in 1935 and Daniel in 1945.

A number of Jean's Morrison cousins still live in the Marlborough district, and up until quite recently Cousin Denny Morrison in nearby Nelson operated a horse and carriage business for weddings and funerals.

Enough rambling around my family history in New Zealand for this week. To read more blogs inspired by this week's topic, just click here to go to Sepia Saturday #271.