I'm very excited about a new discovery and therefore a new line of research so I thought I'd share it with you.
My husband's family are from Canterbury and his gt grandfather was a tobacconist and tea dealer in the town over several decades in the late 1800s. I have researched them a bit but not in great depth - they are the family in this thread https://www.familytreeforum.com/foru...tra-grandchild
Having written up their story I put them aside and got on with my own family research but I wanted to re-visit it because we have a very old leather bound album with about 40-50 photographs of family members. Wouldn't it be great to work out who they are?!
So for xmas I got Jayne Shrimpton's book on Fashion and Family History and I sat down armed with that and the fashion gallery on here to start putting approximate dates to the photos. Before that though I had a look at the backs of a couple of them and got the photographer's name C M Drayson of Canterbury. I googled that and it took me to the Historic Canterbury website http://www.machadoink.com/ I have used this before in my previous research and for anyone who has Canterbury ancestors it is an absolute treasure trove of information and pictures.
As well as letting me know the dates that Drayson was working as a photographer, there was a little bit of biographical information about him and one of the facts was that prior to becoming a photographer he was a tea dealer and tobacconist. Bells started to ring! Loudly! Surely the two families - my Barbers and the Draysons must have known of each other. Then another distant bell started to jingle... have I heard the Drayson name before? ... off to my family tree and yes, sure enough Lizzie Drayson was living with the Barber family in the 1891 census and was listed as a cousin! Result!
So now I have another huge line of fresh research to follow up to see how the two families are connected. (Saving this for a rainy day so please don't post any discoveries on here ) And it certainly explains why the Barbers had such an extensive collection of family photos - they were related to the local photographer! I just wish someone had written some names on the backs.
There's always something new to learn, isn't there?
My husband's family are from Canterbury and his gt grandfather was a tobacconist and tea dealer in the town over several decades in the late 1800s. I have researched them a bit but not in great depth - they are the family in this thread https://www.familytreeforum.com/foru...tra-grandchild
Having written up their story I put them aside and got on with my own family research but I wanted to re-visit it because we have a very old leather bound album with about 40-50 photographs of family members. Wouldn't it be great to work out who they are?!
So for xmas I got Jayne Shrimpton's book on Fashion and Family History and I sat down armed with that and the fashion gallery on here to start putting approximate dates to the photos. Before that though I had a look at the backs of a couple of them and got the photographer's name C M Drayson of Canterbury. I googled that and it took me to the Historic Canterbury website http://www.machadoink.com/ I have used this before in my previous research and for anyone who has Canterbury ancestors it is an absolute treasure trove of information and pictures.
As well as letting me know the dates that Drayson was working as a photographer, there was a little bit of biographical information about him and one of the facts was that prior to becoming a photographer he was a tea dealer and tobacconist. Bells started to ring! Loudly! Surely the two families - my Barbers and the Draysons must have known of each other. Then another distant bell started to jingle... have I heard the Drayson name before? ... off to my family tree and yes, sure enough Lizzie Drayson was living with the Barber family in the 1891 census and was listed as a cousin! Result!
So now I have another huge line of fresh research to follow up to see how the two families are connected. (Saving this for a rainy day so please don't post any discoveries on here ) And it certainly explains why the Barbers had such an extensive collection of family photos - they were related to the local photographer! I just wish someone had written some names on the backs.
There's always something new to learn, isn't there?
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