This wonderful lady was a driving force in the publication of a number of genealogy lines, i.e., Stewart's, Thomas', Wayment's, and associated lines. She had many of the original photographs, which I now have. We were celebrating her 90th birthday when my brother Bryce made the comment about me having space on my computer and why didn't I add our genealogy on to it. Norma commented something like that was a good idea. Bryce was even so kind as to give me PAF 2.30 for Christmas. I think they were both grinning because they understood what I was agreeing to and I obviously didn't. I think they have been grinning since 1992.
She really like to travel and we all used to follow her trips. It wasn't until she was in her 80's that I think she quit taken trips to various places in the world. She continued to travel but it wasn't to some place exotic in the world. She would get back and there were stories to tell. She would always see something interesting and something always went wrong.
I have been slowly going through her stuff. She kept everything. I thought I was a pack rat but I'm not even in the competition by comparison. Looking at what she had has, at times, left me shaking my head in disbelief, which can be followed my minutes of awe. A check book to an account that was closed in 1928 is an example. These incredible photographs that are 100+ years old are at the top of the awe pile. The top of the disbelief pile is her making copies of bad copies when she still had the original negatives. Printing some of the negatives has kept me busy for almost two months. I spend 1 day in 3 in the darkroom and these darkroom sessions require about 8 hours of work. You can only stand the smell of the chemicals for so long. The older negatives do not print without trouble. The people in the photographs had a tendency to wear dark clothes. You want the highlights to show but you also want the detail in the dark areas. You have to search for a contrast that works because the old paper was much more forgiving than the new stuff. I have never seen so many photographs where they posed the people looking away from the sun. They want you to see what is behind them and you have three choices, i.e., expose the background properly and leave the faces dark, expose the faces properly and leave the background very light, or expose for the center where nothing is exposed properly. You have to treat each case individually. The old paper printed both ends fairly well. The faces were a little bit dark and the background was a little bit light but not the drastic differences I am seeing with the modern paper. I think if there was a variable contrast paper with a -2 or -3 range I wouldn't have any problem printing some of the negatives. Unfortunately, the filters only go to "00".
She had two genealogy goals. The first was to find out about her cousins that went to Australia. We were hoping to find some one still living down there but the last one died in 1929. I happened to bump into someone hunting Stewart's from Western Australia and he found where Pimlico was located. They had been assuming for years that it was around Sydney. I was told it was coastward from Lismore. This was sort of like searching records for Los Angeles, California and then finding out they were in San Francisco. I sent a letter to a Barnes in the area and he looked up the family. The people are all gone now but they left a street with their name on it. The second goal was to found out who Archibald Stewart's father was. I have not been able to do that and so I was only able to satisfy one of her goals.
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