Family Tree Frog

Joyce Wingfield (I think) circa 1927 - Location ? Australia

Our theme picture for Sepia Saturday 189 comes from the Flickr Commons Collection of the National Library of Ireland and is entitled "What An Amazing Contraption". It provides us with an opportunity to search out photographs featuring all manner of strange or unidentified contraptions. And if you are fresh out of contraptions there is always cars or people sat in ridiculous positions. Contraption, n. (sl.). Queer machine, makeshift contrivance. (perh.f. contrive, cf. conceive, -ception). I have been fascinated with contraptions from a very early age.  This photo is taken at Hurstville I think c.1960.  I'm sitting on the bed with my father looking at one of my parent's cameras - maybe it's the Voigtlander .   Both my parents enjoyed photography - my father often set up an amateur dark room in the laundry or the garage and I loved watching the photos magically appear in the trays of developing fluid.  My mother was a fiendish photographer and ...

L to R Tom McLoughlin, Barbara McLoughlin, Kit McLoughlin nee Forfar, Belle Wingfield nee Forfar, Joy Jeffery nee Wingfield, Dorothy Peterson nee Forfar and Reg Peterson. This photo was taken on the occasion of June's wedding 1954. Only I'm not sure who June is - I think it's maybe Marjorie June Peterson - Dorothy or Dot's daughter. I need to check with my cousin Kath. I suspect June is Reg's sister -  Reg being my cousin Kath's father - confused yet? Dorothy is the older sister of Kit and Belle, the twins in the middle of the photo. Anyway - that is my maternal grandfather on the far left. Then my mother - she would have been about eighteen or nineteen Then my maternal grandmother who I never knew - Kit. And then her twin sister - Belle. Family correspondence suggests that the photo may have been taken in a family home - possibly Enfield, Sydney.  The marriage took place at Petersham according to the Registry Office rec...

1938 Hebburn Street Hamilton, Newcastle  The first photo in my collage is of my mother Barbara Conner nee McLoughlin .  I love this photo.  My mother looks so cheerful and happy. And of course I think it is very apt for this festival as she is in a Wattle Tree - the Floral Emblem of Australia.   My mother would have been just three years old in this photo. On the back of the photo is her own handwriting saying Hepburn Street Hamilton.The "p" seems to be crossed out.  So I'm thinking maybe it is Hebburn Street Hamilton, Newcastle. And in my grandmother's handwriting is "My girlie taken in Auntie Bell's wattle tree.  Xmas 1938" I wonder if that Wattle tree is still there and if so how big it is now. I have searched Find My Past without much joy in an attempt to find the Wingfields in the census.   Belle was my maternal grandmother's twin sister.  She married Irvine William Wingfield in 1922.  Her ...