Nana poses for a photograph with a camel

#genealogyphotoaday: My grandmother was not camera shy!

Nana never missed an opportunity to have her photo taken even if the pyramids and camel are competing for presence.

My grandmother, Grace Shepherd,was born in London in 1896 . She married Charles Collis Dawson in 1916. Family tales say one of the agreements they made when she got married is that she would migrate to New Zealand with her new husband. WW1 got in the way so they sailed in the early 1920s to NZ with 3 small children. It was not until the mid 1960s she got to travel back to the UK to see her family.

I remember many of us cousins got the day off school to meet Nana at the docking ship. She bought us girls a leather bag back from Egypt. Mum got a pair of brass things that were like small wine glasses. They had carved designs on the cup section. I was never sure if they were for drinking out of or a small collection of flowers. They sat in the lounge for years. Mostly on the television as TV’s in the 1960 were large things in a wooden cabinet. On the top would be flowers, photos, doilies and the brass things. Nothing like the flat screens today.

Family Search helped locate the date

According to the passenger records at FamilySearch the ships name was the Angelina Lauro .  It arrived in Wellington on Monday, 31 October 1966.* Nana’s return to New Zealand is the date I am featuring on my Family History Year. To find out what happened on other dates in my family history.

Yes Nana never missed an opportunity to have her photo and was always trying to herd us into a group to take a snap with her Brownie camera from Kodak.

View this #GenealogyPhotoADay along with others on Instagram.

* “New Zealand, Archives New Zealand, Passenger Lists, 1839-1973,” database with images.