Last week Michele and I contacted our Nelson correspondents/field researchers Belinda Fletcher and Iain Sharp with a small photo from the Harris family album. The photo is a street view with a row of three houses to the right behind a picket fence, a big tree after the second house, 8 figures on the road Read More…
Tag: edwin harris
The New South Wales Connection
‘Harry went to Hawera to see Concie. Harry is not tall as we thought, he is very good looking with nice gentlemanly manners, speaks well, he is musical, belongs to the Bathurst Brass band. I unpacked my pictures on Friday for him to see & to choose one of yours.’ Emily Harris is in New Read More…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Connecting with Edwin’s optical amusement
Annabel Galpin and her daughter Louise were in New Plymouth earlier this year for the WOMAD festival. They also made time to go and see at first hand Edwin Harris’s optical amusement, the view of new Plymouth 3 august 1860 that has collaged figures and carefully cut openings (windows, doors, tents, moon) through which actual Read More…
What Happened at Ilchester Mansion
The clue was staring at us all along. Edwin’s youngest sister Ellen Susan Harris, writing to New Zealand in 1842, gives an insouciant account of leaving her position as a governess and then continues with family news: But I will say no more of myself as I think you will be better pleased to hear Read More…
Edwin Harris, Interior of St Andrew’s Church, 1825
The year is 1896. Edwin Harris and his youngest daughter Ellen are dead, and Emily is living alone at 34 Nile St in Nelson. On black-edged notepaper she writes to her sister Mary Weyergang with some important news from England. A letter has come from cousin Bessie Harris in Plymouth, thanking Emily for the condolences Read More…
Edwin Harris, Painter &c
Sometimes the answers are right there. It just takes a while to see them. We’ve read the William Bryan passenger list, 7 names in the cabin, 141 men, women and children in steerage. The Harrises are there: Harris, Edwin Painter 32; Mrs 30; Boy under 7; Girl under 7; Girl 10 months. In fact Edwin Read More…