Elvie Ruth Bonner (1901-1986) was a three times great granddaughter of the First Fleet convict Richard Morgan (1748-1837), later granted a good parcel of land at Kangaroo Point during the settlement of Hobart, Tasmania. Elvie’s grandmother was a Watson, of the family line tracing back to Rockingham Castle in Jutland, through her grandmother Catherine Marriott Watson (1851-1943). In turn, Catherine Marriott Watson was Richard Morgan’s granddaughter.
Elvie was my grandmother and across time we shared an interest in film photography. She primarily made medium format photographs from around the early 1920s through to the mid-to-late 1970s and captured the life of her family and the hardships of itinerant work and life in Tasmania’s rural districts. The Bonners, Watsons and their relations settled the north east from Scottsdale around to Ringarooma and played critical roles in the development of infrastructure and services.
My grandparents, my father, uncles and aunts worked in the harsh South West cutting timber and doing hard labour. My father left school at the end of Grade 6 to work for the family’s wages. My grandfather was a hard man who paid off at the end of World War 1 as a sergeant from the 14th Battalion. They experienced the labour of their era, the kind that grinds young bones to old and crushes dreams into rubble. These are all reflected within her photographic negatives.
My sister sent me the first envelope of film negatives to scan and then another thicker one arrived more recently. I now have possession of over three hundred of her original negatives. Mostly a little scratched and banged up from many decades without being properly archived… so that’s my family work at present – archiving my grandmother’s surviving photographs and saving them from the pyres of dying family.
If you’re interested, I post random photographs from that collection on my general weblog at StevenClark.com.au under the category Old Film.
As a photographer, there’s nothing like holding a film negative with that sort of family history. I’m hoping as my old aunties pass away they have their own envelopes of nanna’s work to share.
The Mazer
Morgan’s Barn Mead