Who did Emily Harris write to during her long life and where are those letters now? Her descendants have done an admirable job of preserving family papers and artifacts, and so it is that we have access to a history of Emily and her family in their own words through the 1840s and early 1850s. Read More…
Author: Betty Davis
Flames and archives
In her diaries from the 1880s Emily Harris tells two stories about burning. The first concerns the destruction of a diary when she was a young woman in Taranaki in the late 1850s. She is painfully conscious of the loss her action imposed at the time and regrets it still: Well, long ago, some seven Read More…
34 Nile St, Nelson
It is February 2018. We are visiting Peter and Roseanne Cranstone at their farm near Fordell, south of Whanganui. Roseanne has brought out the paintings and drawings by Emily and Edwin Harris she inherited from her father Philip Briant. Her cousin’s wife Judith is looking at a panorama of Nelson in Edwin’s sketchbook and says Read More…
Kōwhai
I passed a kōwhai tree in flower this morning and thought of Emily. The early springtime flowers are opening up one after another and the tūī birds are getting louder and louder. Soon they’ll crowd the kōwhai, turning their beaks bright yellow with pollen. I love to see a puffed up tūī singing in black Read More…
Some Lighted Windows
What made Edwin Harris draw and paint the view from Marsland Hill in New Plymouth 3 August 1860? And what made him produce multiple versions of the scene that shows troops from the 40th Regiment being brought ashore and lined up to march on Māori positions near Waitara, 16 km to the north of the Read More…
Captain Stoney’s Awful Novel
The pencilled comments in Puke Ariki’s copy of Taranaki: A Tale of the War by Henry Butler Stoney are unanimous in their condemnation of the book. ‘Bunkum,’ says one. And: ‘It is rarely I have read a book in which I have not found some passage worthy of remark or of transcription, but this is Read More…
Five Venturesome Women in a Bullock Cart
‘I believe I was at that time the only girl in all Taranaki who ever wrote a line.’ Emily Harris’s words, written years after the events they describe, are still electrifying. A young woman, writing poetry, in wartime Taranaki? Who knew. She goes on: ‘I did write some verses in the evening but never showed Read More…
Writing Lines: highlights from Emily’s 1860s letters
There is nothing like copy editing and proof reading to focus the mind and eyes on textual detail. But the same close attention also tunes the ear to tones and inflections of the voice coming off the page. After our latest stint with Emily’s writing, it was the work of a moment to go cherry-picking Read More…
Shedding some light on the Plymouth Paddons
Contributed by Nigel Overton, City Heritage Curator, The Box, Plymouth Museums Galleries Archives Further word from Plymouth confirms that Henry John Paddon (1803-1874) and Francis William Paddon (c.1804?-1860) were indeed two individuals, but they were two men who had much in common. Both are mentioned in the Harris family correspondence, and both appear to have Read More…
Pinning down Edwin’s St Andrew’s
Men and women of the library, conduits to knowledge that lies beyond the easy touch of a button, are the true heroes of research. They know where to go and seem endlessly patient in the retrieval of lost components and the closing of puzzling gaps. Once started on a trail, they do not give up, Read More…