Ambrotype
Photograph
Maker & role
Unknown, Maker
Production date
Early 20th Century
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Object detail
Title
Portrait of Thomas McKenzie
Collection
Measurements
0 - Whole, H: 8.4 x W: 7.2 x D: 0.5cm (H: 84 x W: 72 x D: 5mm)
Subject person
Credit line
Purchase, 1985
Meroogal Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Meroogal Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Caption
Ambrotype portrait of Thomas Mackenzie
Description
Thomas McKenzie was born around 1794 in the parish of Lochbroom, Ross Shire, on the north-west coast of Scotland. Like many of his fellow Highlanders, Thomas was making a difficult living as a shepherd & farm labourer in the aftermath of decades of Highland clearances when he decided to emigrate to Australia in 1839 with his wife Mary and six children. The family settled in the Shoalhaven district on the south coast of New South Wales where Thomas became a dairy farmer. He served as an elder of the local Presbyterian church for more than forty years and as a native Gaelic speaker he was an especially welcome visitor to the homes of the many Gaelic-speaking members of the Shoalhaven congregation. When, in 1987, Thomas McKenzie’s great-great-great granddaughter June Wallace looked at this ambrotype picture of her forebear (holding a snuff box) she observed that “he was a craggy old Highlander”, but the mourners at his funeral in Cambewarra in 1892 remembered that he was also a genial man, “remarkably liberal and unselfish in every direction.”
Accession number
M86/86
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Head Office
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Sydney, NSW 2000
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