One Photograph, Two Recipients

A photograph sent to two women, with two very different meanings

The Sepia Saturday theme this week features a young boy sitting beside a lifebuoy, posing for the camera. Looking at it reminded me of another photograph and another lifebuoy—one that carried a very different story.

Taken aboard the S.S. Nellore in 1957, this photograph first travelled to John’s wife and later to the woman who would become my mother. [W182]

The photograph shows my father, John Williamson, standing beside a lifebuoy aboard the S.S. Nellore in late 1957.

At the time, John was serving as a Junior Engineer Officer with the Eastern & Australian Steamship Company. The Nellore carried him to ports that must have seemed wonderfully exotic to a young Australian sailor: Manila, Yokohama, Kobe and Yokkaichi. Somewhere during those voyages, someone took this photograph.

What makes the image interesting is not where it was taken, but who eventually received it.

When the photograph was first developed, John was still married. The marriage was failing, though the separation had not yet happened. It is easy to imagine him slipping the photograph into an envelope and posting it home from some distant port. Perhaps he enclosed a letter. Perhaps he didn’t. Either way, the photograph carried a simple message: I am still here. I am still out at sea.

That was the photograph’s first story.

Then came another ship.

After leaving the Nellore, John joined the Monowai, running between Sydney, Wellington and Auckland. It was during one of those Tasman crossings that he met Judy.

What began as a shipboard flirtation—a dance, a shared laugh, a handsome uniform—gradually became something much deeper. John, eleven years older than Judy, soon found himself writing letters full of longing. In one he confessed:

“I still can’t figure whether it was all a dream or whether you are actually real.”

Then, in February 1959, more than a year after the photograph had been taken, he sent Judy the same picture.

The same photograph.

A different story.

But by then the meaning had changed completely.

To his wife, the photograph had been a distant signal from a man trying to work out where his life was heading.

To Judy, it became something more personal. Not a declaration of love. Not a promise of a future together. Simply a quiet plea: Don’t forget me.

By then, what had begun as a holiday romance had become real. John wasn’t asking Judy to build a life with him—not yet. He was simply afraid she might stop thinking about him. So he sent her a photograph from his past and hoped she would carry it into their future.

One photograph.

Two recipients.

Two entirely different stories.

Today, the two photographs have come to rest with the eldest daughters from the first two of John’s three marriages. Neither woman was the original recipient, yet each inherited a photograph that had once carried such personal meaning for her mother. When we eventually realised that our mothers had both received exactly the same photograph, more than a year apart and under very different circumstances, we were astonished. An ordinary shipboard snapshot had quietly preserved a family story that neither of us had known.

The little boy in this week's theme photograph sits beside a lifebuoy, gazing out toward the sea. John stood beside his lifebuoy on a ship's deck—already there. Yet by the time his photograph reached its second recipient, the lifebuoy no longer symbolised rescue or safety. It had become something far more human: a reminder that photographs tell us less about the moment they were taken than about the people who later hold them.

Learning Tennis

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt features a group of tennis players posing for the camera. It immediately took me back to my own tennis-playing days in Cheltenham during the 1970s and, rather unexpectedly, to a scholarship that later took me to the Philippines where I occasionally played as well.

When I think back to when I learned to play tennis, I don't think of trophies or rankings. I think of the loose red surface of the court made from crushed brick and burned shale. I think of the hessian bags tied to a wooden beam and Big Macs in a styrofoam clamshell.

Because that's what I actually remember.

Case 3: The Bootmaker Who Borrowed a Name

 A Victorian Mystery

This article is part of an ongoing series treating the photographs in my family collection as primary sources — not simply illustrations of family stories, but historical evidence capable of testing, confirming, and sometimes overturning those stories altogether.

In 1871, a Camberwell bootmaker appeared in the census as “Alec Lee.”

Yet the birth certificates of his children consistently named him as Alfred Ellis.

For more than a decade, the family lived publicly under one surname while keeping another in legal records. The wife was buried as Lee.  But whenever a child’s birth was registered — a permanent legal act — the father gave the name Ellis.

Why would a working-class Victorian tradesman adopt a new identity for fifteen years, then abandon it when he remarried?

And who was the mysterious Alexander Lee whose name he borrowed?

Figure 1 Three Brothers, all the children of James Ellis and Sarah Harriet Jardine with one child from the next generation (son of Alfred Ellis and nephew of the other two). Left to Right: Back Row. James Ellis (b.1833), Richard Ellis (b.1842), Charles Ellis (b. 1874 son of Alfred Ellis & Martha Bartlett), Front Row -seated, Alfred Ellis (b.1839), Camberwell Surrey. Date c1910 [208]

The photograph was found late one afternoon in an old cardboard suitcase in Lurline’s garage, during a visit from a cousin who had come searching for family memorabilia and history. Lurline thought there might be more photographs somewhere. She was right. She disappeared outside for a few minutes, came back with the suitcase, and found the photograph inside. It was instantly clear this photograph mattered.[i][ii]

This particular photograph had a sheet of waxed paper over it with the names of the 4 men written over their images.

Alfred Ellis — the seated man in the front row — had spent fifteen years living under an assumed name. The surviving records allow us to reconstruct how it happened.

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1. Alfred Before “Lee”

Alfred Ellis was born in Clerkenwell in 1839, the son of James Ellis, a shoemaker.[iii] He grew up in the crowded artisan households of inner London, surrounded by the tools and rhythms of bootmaking.

But in his early twenties, Alfred drifted. When he married Martha Bartlett in 1864, he described himself not as a bootmaker but as a watchmaker,[iv] a trade entirely unrelated to his father’s. It was a brief detour. Within a year, he had returned to the family craft, registering his first child as a “Bootmaker (Master).”[v]

By 1865, Alfred appeared to be establishing himself independently. But something went wrong. And that is where the story begins to twist.[vi]

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2. The First Clue: St George’s Road

In November 1867, Alfred registered the birth of his second child, Edward.[vii] His occupation had changed. He was no longer a “Master” bootmaker. He was now a “Shoemaker Journeyman” —an employee, working for someone else.

He appears to have lost his independence. And he was living at 2 St George's Road, Camberwell.

Now consider the following. That same year, Kelly’s Directory of Surrey listed a master bootmaker trading on St Georges Road under a different name:

Lee Alexander, boot maker, Camberwell.[viii]

A man named Alexander Lee was already there—an established tradesman with his own shop, his own customers, his own reputation. Alfred Ellis, a journeyman, was almost certainly working for him.

The evidence begins to align.

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3. The Move to 257 St Georges Road

Between November 1867 and December 1870, something decisive occurred. The family moved from number 2 to 257 St. George's Road—and the name Lee appeared for the first time in the family.

The evidence comes from an extraordinary document: the birth certificate of Martha Sarah Ellis, born 31 December 1870.[ix]

Alfred registered the child as Ellis, as he always would. But the informant was not Alfred. It was Martha herself. And when asked for her maiden name—her name before marriage—she did not write “Bartlett.” She wrote “Lee.”

This is not a registrar’s error. Martha signed the certificate. She had so thoroughly internalised the family’s assumed identity that she gave her everyday social name as her legal former name.

By the end of 1870, the Lee identity had become embedded in everyday family life.

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4. Living as the Lee Family

From this point on, the family presented as Lee to almost everyone.

The 1871 census records the household as “Alec Lee” (Alexander Lee), with Martha and the children all listed under the same surname.[x] School enrolments between 1872 and 1876 show the children—Martha,[xi] Kate,[xii] Alfred Jr.,[xiii] and Edward[xiv]—all enrolled as Lee. Martha, the eldest daughter, started at Gloucester Road Infants around age two, then transferred to Gloucester Road School in August 1875.  The father is recorded simply as “Alfred” in the school registers, suggesting he used his real first name in person while maintaining the Lee surname publicly.

But critically, on every single birth certificate from 1865 to 1877, Alfred registered his children as Ellis. He understood that birth registration fixed a legal identity permanently. The census, the school, the neighbourhood—they could call him Lee. The register office would record Ellis.

Alfred maintained a clear, consistent distinction: legal identity vs. social identity—and he never confused the two.[xv]

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5. The Children and the Two Surnames

The children absorbed this double identity without apparent confusion.

When Alfred Jr. left home, he used Lee socially. The 1881 census finds him working as a waiter at the Bell Tavern in the City of London, recorded as “Alfred E. Lee.”[xvi] But when he emigrated to Australia in 1887, the passenger list records him as Alfred Ellis—his legal name.[xvii]

His brother Edward followed the same pattern. When admitted to the Gordon Road Workhouse in 1880, he was entered as Edward Lee.[xviii] But when transferred to the Mount Edgcumbe industrial training ship, the naval register recorded him as Edward Ellis.xx Institutional authorities appear to have required his legal surname.[xix]

The daughters, Martha and Kate, navigated the same dual identity. After their mother’s death in 1880, they remained with their father and younger siblings, and in 1881 were baptised under the surname Ellis—their legal name.[xx][xxi] Yet in everyday life, they continued to use Lee. In 1889, they emigrated together to Western Australia under assisted passage schemes.[xxii] Martha later settled in Melbourne and married Walter Todman, while Kate married in Fremantle.[xxiii]

The younger sons—Charles, Walter, and Frederick—eventually dispersed across England, Scotland, Ireland, and Australia. As adults, none appears to have continued using the surname Lee. Their father’s borrowed identity had served its purpose and was quietly abandoned by the next generation.

The children followed the same distinction their father had maintained for years: Lee in social life, Ellis in legal identity. They knew who they were.

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6. Martha’s Death and the Deepening of “Lee”

On 2 September 1880, Martha died at 245 St Georges Road from post-partum haemorrhage. She was forty years old.[xxiv]

Alfred registered the death himself. He signed the certificate as “Alexander Lee, Widower.” Not Alfred Ellis. Not even a hybrid. He used the assumed name on a legal document for the first time. And he buried her as Martha Lee.

At first glance, this contradicts his careful avoidance of Lee on birth certificates. But it makes sense when you understand the difference.

Birth registration fixed a permanent legal identity for a child. Alfred never compromised that.

Death and burial recorded the identity a person had lived under. Martha had been Martha Lee to her neighbours, her children, and her community for a decade. Burying her as Martha Ellis would have been not only locally incomprehensible but a kind of retrospective erasure of the life she had actually lived.

Alfred appears to have understood that distinction clearly. In doing so, he chose fidelity to the life she had actually lived over strict legal formality.

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7. The Return to Alfred Ellis

On 13 November 1883, Alfred remarried. His bride was Mary Elizabeth Southgate.[xxv] And on the marriage certificate, he appeared as Alfred Ellis—his birth name, his legal name, his father’s name.

The Lee identity was not abandoned overnight. Electoral registers show him listed as Alexander Lee as late as 1890,[xxvi] as Alfred Ellis in 1892,[xxvii] and as Alexander Ellis Lee in 1893 alone — and finally as Alfred Ellis from 1894 onwards, now registered at 118 Commercial Road[xxviii]—a hybrid name that suggests the authorities were trying to reconcile his dual identities. But the reversion had begun.

Why did he go back to Ellis? Most likely because marriage required proof of identity—especially for a widower. His first wife had died as Martha Lee.[xxix] To marry again legally, he needed to establish who he really was.

The Lee period ended as it began: with a practical decision.

8. The Commercial Road Years

By the mid-1890s, Alfred Ellis had settled into something new: ordinariness.

The borrowed name was fading. St George’s Road—where he had traded as Lee for more than a decade—was behind him. Commercial Road, Peckham, became the centre of his later life.

The transition was gradual. Electoral records through the late 1880s and early 1890s show Alfred moving between addresses while still maintaining connections to the St George’s Road premises. But by 1895, he had consolidated both home and business at 118 Commercial Road, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

The 1901 and 1911 censuses both record him there, still working as a bootmaker into old age. For a brief period around 1908–1909, electoral registers suggest he also maintained rooms nearby at 145 Commercial Road, though the reason is unclear.

Alfred Ellis died in March 1912 at 118 Commercial Road. He had spent the final decades of his life living openly under his own name, without any borrowing required.

 

Figure 3 Alfred Ellis outside his shop at 118 Commercial Road, Peckham, c.1908. Electoral registers suggest the family also briefly maintained rooms at nearby 145 Commercial Road during this period. [ T224]

If the photo is examined carefully, the number 118 can be seen on the building. 145 Commercial Rd, Peckham, circa 1908. They lived at 145 Commercial Rd, and the shop was at 118 Commercial Rd.

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9. So Who Was Alexander Lee?

The surviving records cannot prove exactly what happened between Alfred Ellis and the original Alexander Lee.

But the most plausible explanation is this: sometime between 1867 and 1870, the original Alexander Lee ceased to operate his bootmaking business at 257 St George’s Road — whether through death, retirement, or emigration. Alfred Ellis, who had been working for him as a journeyman, took over the premises and the trade.

In Victorian England, it was common practice to continue trading under a previous owner’s name. The goodwill of a small business was tied to personal name recognition. Customers knew “Alexander Lee the bootmaker.” A new proprietor trading as “Alfred Ellis at the old Lee premises” risked losing that accumulated trust.

So Alfred became Alexander Lee — in business first, then gradually in every aspect of daily life.

What began as a practical commercial decision became, over a decade, the family’s lived reality. And when Martha signed “Lee” as her maiden name, she was not lying. She was telling the truth about who she had become.

The mystery is not fully solved. We may never know what became of the original Alexander Lee. But the evidence points strongly to a man who borrowed a name to keep a business alive — and found that the name borrowed him back.

For descendants, the story leaves an unusual legacy: a family that lived for years between two names, carrying both identities at once. The surviving records preserve not simply a deception, but the complicated reality of how ordinary Victorian families navigated work, reputation, legality, and survival

  This post is part of Sepia Saturday 827 : Saturday 23 May 2026. Click here to see how others are sharing their history through photographs.

Footnotes

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[i] Yvonne Marshall in conversation with Lurline Marshall during a visit to Western Australia, 2003-4

[ii] As told by Yvonne Marshall in a discussion with the author 2003-4

[iii] Birth certificate for Alfred Ellis, born 12 October 1839, son of James Ellis & Sarah Jardine; citing General Register Office, England GRO Reference: 1839  D Quarter in ST. JAMES CLERKENWELL  Volume 03  Page 60 (certified copy).

[iv] Marriage certificate of Alfred Ellis and Bartlett Martha, married 27 April 1864; District Shoreditch, Vol 1d, Page 256, General Register Office, England and Wales (certified copy).

[v] Birth certificate for Alfred Ellis, born 15 Oct 1865, son of Alfred Ellis & Martha Bartlett, citing General Register Office, England  GRO Reference: 1865  D Quarter in CAMBERWELL  Volume 01D  Page 584 (certified copy).

[vi] Birth certificate for Alfred Ellis, born 12 October 1839; 1841 census (HO107/661/1/50); 1851 census (HO107/1521/333/42); 1864 marriage certificate (Shoreditch, Vol 1d, p.256).

[vii] Birth certificate for Edward Ellis, born 18 November 1867, son of Alfred Ellis & Martha Bartlett; citing General Register Office, England GRO Reference: 1867  D Quarter in CAMBERWELL  Volume 01D  Page 644 (certified copy).

[viii] 1867 Post Office Directory, in UK, City and County Directories, 1766–1946 (database online), Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Provo, Utah, 2013; entry for Alexander Lee, boot maker, St George’s Road from Well Street to Crabtree Shot Road, Peckham, Camberwell, Surrey, p. 1482. No building numbers listed. Accessed via Ancestry

[ix] Birth certificate Martha Sarah Ellis, born 31 December 1870, daughter of Alfred Ellis and Martha, citing General Register Office, England, GRO Reference: 1871  M Quarter in CAMBERWELL  Volume 01D  Page 741 (certified copy).

[x] 1871 census of England, London, Surrey, Enumeration District: 19 - St George Road, Camberwell, London, England, folio 130, page 47, Alec Lee head of household; digital images, brightsolid online publishing ltd, Findmypast (www.findmypast.com : accessed 29 Jan 2017); citing PRO RG10/739

[xi] London Metropolitan Archives, School Admission and Discharge Register for Girls, Gloucester Road School, admission entry for Martha Lee, admitted August 1875; giving birth date 2 June 1870, age 5, daughter of Alfred Lee; reference LCC/EO/DIV07/GLO/AD/001. Database: London, England, School Admissions and Discharges, 1840–1911, Ancestry (Lehi, Utah: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010), citing records held by The London Archives, London, England.

[xii] London Metropolitan Archives, Admission and Discharge Register for Girls, Gloucester Road School, admission entry for Kate Lee, admitted June 1876; age 4, born 12 June 1872, daughter of Alfred H. Lee; reference LCC/EO/DIV07/GLO/AD/001. Database: London, England, School Admissions and Discharges, 1840–1911, Ancestry (Lehi, Utah: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010), citing records held by The London Archives, London, England.

[xiii] London Metropolitan Archives, Admission and Discharge Register for Boys, Southampton Street School, admission entry for Alfd Lee, admitted 21 September 1874; age 8, born 15 October 1865, son of Alfd Lee; reference LCC/EO/DIV07/SOU/AD/001. Database: London, England, School Admissions and Discharges, 1840–1911, Ancestry (Lehi, Utah: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010), citing records held by The London Archives, London, England.

[xiv] London Metropolitan Archives, Admission and Discharge Register for Boys, Southampton Street School, admission entry for Edward Lee, admitted 21 September 1874; age 6, born 31 December 1867, son of Alfd Lee; reference LCC/EO/DIV07/SOU/AD/001. Database: London, England, School Admissions and Discharges, 1840–1911, Ancestry (Lehi, Utah: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010), citing records held by The London Archives, London, England.

[xv] 1871 census of England; school enrolment records (1872–1876) show children enrolled as Lee, father recorded as “Alfred.”

[xvi] 1881 England Census, London City registration district, civil parish of St Martin Ludgate, Enumeration District 2, RG11/377, folio 17, page 2, entry for Alfred E. Lee, aged 15, waiter, born Peckham, Surrey, living and working at 61 Old Bailey, “The Bell Tavern,” in the household of Sarah A. Suggate; database, Ancestry (Provo, Utah: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2004).

[xvii] Victoria, Australia, Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists, 1839–1923, Public Record Office Victoria, North Melbourne, Victoria; Inward Overseas Passenger Lists (British Ports), microfiche copy of VPRS 947, Series VPRS 7666; entry for Alfred Ellis, English, age 21, arrived 6 August 1887 on Orient, departing London and arriving at Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, Australia; database, Ancestry (Ancestry Record 1635 #3166801, accessed 17 April 2022).

[xviii] Entry of Admission for Edward Lee Gordon Road Workhouse 10 March 1880 (Ancestry, Workhouse Admission and Discharge Records, 1659-1930, Gordon Road Workhouse 1879-1892, London Metropolitan Archives, London, England. LEBG/189/1 [Image 30 of 238, accessed 17/08/2015]

[xix] Census returns of England and Wales, 1881, Civil Parish, Township or Place: St Germans - extract for Edward Ellis living on the "Mount Edgcumbe" Industrial Training Ship (1881 Census, Registration district: St Germans, Sub-registration district: Saltash, ED, institution, or vessel: Industrial Training Ship Mount Edgeumbe, Public Records Office, England (PRO) RG11/2282/177

[xx] Church of England Parish Registers, St Luke’s, Peckham, Southwark, London, baptism register, entry for Martha Ellis, baptised 27 May 1881, no. 578, p. 73; London Metropolitan Archives, London, England; in London, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813–1906, database and images, Ancestry, Ancestry (accessed 27 January 2017).

[xxi] Church of England Parish Registers, St Luke’s, Peckham, Southwark, London, baptism register, entry for Kate Ellen Ellis, baptised  9 September 1881, no. 686, p. 86; London Metropolitan Archives, London, England; in London, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813–1906, database and images, Ancestry, Ancestry (accessed 27 January 2017).

[xxii] Passenger and Crew Lists, ship Nairnshire, passenger list, p. 3, arrival 8 October 1889, entry for Kate Ellen Ellis and Martha Sarah Ellis; State Records Office of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia; copy of original record provided via email by Tom Reynolds, 8 February 2013.

[xxiii] Marriage Certificate, Walter Todman and Martha Ellis, married 16 January 1892, reg. no. 345/1892; Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Victoria, Australia; indexed in Victorian Marriage Index, Victoria BDM (accessed 23 May 2026).

[xxiv] Death Certificate, Martha Lee, 2 September 1880, St George, Camberwell, Surrey, England; citing September quarter 1880, Camberwell registration district, vol. 1d, p. 534; General Register Office, Southport, England. The certificate records her cause of death as post-partum haemorrhage.

[xxv] Marriage Certificate, Alfred Ellis and Mary Elizabeth Southgate, 13 November 1883, Camberwell registration district, Surrey, England; citing December quarter 1883, vol. 1d, p. 1263; General Register Office, Southport, England.

[xxvi] London Metropolitan Archives, Electoral Registers, Southwark Camberwell North, 1890, entry no. 2846 for Alexander Lee, house at 52 Commercial Road, Peckham, and shop at 245 St George’s Road; image 52 of 221; London, England, UK

[xxvii] London Metropolitan Archives, Electoral Registers, Southwark Camberwell North, 1892, entry no. 2836 for Alfred Ellis, house and shop at 245 St George’s Road, p. 68, image 74 of 372; London, England, UK.

[xxviii] London Metropolitan Archives, Electoral Registers, Southwark Camberwell North, 1894, entry no. 2850 for Alexander Ellis Lee, house at 245 St George’s Road; London, England, UK.

[xxix] Death Certificate, Martha Lee, 2 September 1880 Informant: “Alexander Lee, Widower.”

Case File 2: Carrying the Badge

Three Photographs of Rita Williamson and the Methodist Home Front

This article is part of an ongoing series treating the photographs in my family collection as primary sources — not simply illustrations of family stories, but historical evidence capable of testing, confirming, and sometimes overturning those stories altogether.

Case File 1 - A Table Set for Five

A fifth birthday, a missing family, and what one photograph can prove

This is the first in an occasional series treating the photographs in my family collection as primary sources — not illustrations of what the family believed, but evidence that can test, confirm, or overturn those beliefs

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On a dairy farm outside Camperdown, in Victoria’s Western District, on the evening of 19 May 1949, a half-sister named Judith, eleven years older, set a table for five and baked a birthday cake because she had remembered what everyone else had forgotten—or set aside: that her five-year-old half-sister, Diana, was turning five that day.

The rest of the family—mother, father, half-brother—were somewhere in town, at some meeting, the details now lost. They did not come.

Photograph: Diana’s 5th birthday. Judith made the cake. 19 May 1949, Camperdown, Victoria, Australia. [T382]

So, Judith put a paper crown on Diana’s head, stood her behind the table with its five glasses, its single-layer cake, and its five candles, and stepped back far enough to get all of it into the frame. Far enough to make sure the record showed what had been prepared, and for whom, and that it had not gone to waste.

Diana smiled.

Judith pressed the shutter.

The photograph has survived more than seven decades. The five glasses are still on the table, still waiting.

Reflection:

Most photographs from this era that have survived in archives and collections are the ones that were considered worth keeping because they were good photographs: sharp, well-composed, formally significant.

This one survived for a different reason. Judith had kept the photo, pasted into her photograph album. it brought back memories. The image meant something to her; it was not just a composition but a story, and she kept it accordingly.

That is a different, and arguably rarer, kind of value.

Technical perfection is reproducible. This moment—this specific table, this specific child, this specific act of care by one sister for another on a winter evening in Camperdown—is not.

The blur is the price of admission to something real. It is a very small price.

The story it carries - a half-sister's love, a table set for people who didn't come, a five-year-old smiling anyway - is not diminished by a single pixel of blur. That story is fully present.

In fact, the photograph’s imperfections may tell us more than a perfect image could. A professional portrait tells you about the photographer. This photograph tells you about Judith.

She was eleven years older than Diana, but not someone usually expected to manage the household or care for younger children. Which makes what we see here feel less like routine and more like a choice.

A sharper image of this scene might feel like evidence: clean, legible, complete. This one feels like memory: the way moments are actually held, soft at the edges, with feeling more durable than detail.

The blur is also honest. This was not a staged occasion. It was a young woman moving quickly, working in low light, on a farm, with whatever camera the family owned. The imperfection is not a flaw—it is a record of the conditions under which the photograph was made.

And in that sense, it is evidence—not just of a birthday, but of who showed up, who did not, and who made sure the moment was recorded anyway

It also does something quieter, but just as important. Family memory preserved the event. The photograph fixes its date. Diana was born on 19 May 1944; she is five here. That places this scene, with reasonable certainty, on 19 May 1949.

This post is part of SEPIA SATURDAY  824: Celebration, 2nd May 2026. Click here to see how others are sharing their history through photographs.

Matching Faces & Names

Unidentified photos in the family archive

Before telephones and the internet, keeping in touch was done by sending letters and photographs to relatives in far-flung places. They were precious reminders of extended family. As the years passed these artefacts became keepsakes, kept in albums, boxes or old biscuit tins. Some were labelled with names and dates but often the identifying details of the photos were contained in the accompanying letters they arrived with.  As the photographs travelled through time and were passed to the next generation they were often carefully divided amongst descendants and their accompanying correspondence discarded and/or separated from one or more of the photographs.

Around the year 2005, six Australian fourth Generation Descendants of Alfred Ellis and Martha Bartlett started to work loosely together to search out and contact other descendants and relatives. This work resulted in the discovery of eleven new relatives. Information, memories and images were all shared via the now-defunct Yahoo message boards in group called EllisCousins.[i]

Like the image of Alfred’s shop in England sent to his daughter in Western Australia. Other photographs were located, often multiple copies of the same photograph some with notations written on the back, some glued into Albums and others nameless sitting in old biscuit tins. Images and their information were gathered, compared and shared; people once unidentified became known. The remaining images still unidentified continue to be discussed and researched, timelines drawn up, foreheads, noses and chins compared against each other.

Alfred Ellis with his wife Martha Bartlett were the parents of seven children of which five migrated to Australia:

1.       Alfred Ellis born 1865, migrated to Australia constantly moving between New South Wales and Western Australia.

2.       Edward Ellis born 1867, migrated to Australia initially to New South Wales and finally settled in Victoria.

3.       Martha Sarah (Ellis) Simpson born 1870, migrated to Australia initially to Western Australia but finally settled in Victoria.

4.       Kate Ellen (Ellis) Wardle born 1872, migrated to Australia and settled in Western Australia.

5.       Charles Ellis born 1874, migrated to Scotland and then moved between Scotland and Australia before he finally settled in Western Australia.

6.       Walter Ellis born 1875, stayed in England.

7.       Frederick Ellis born 1876, migrated to Ireland but returned to England.

Martha died prematurely in 1880, leaving Alfred with children aged between fifteen and four, the youngest 5 still living at home in the 1881 Census.[ii] [iii] Alfred married Mary Elizabeth Southgate in 1883. Alfred with Mary then went on to have three children, one of who migrated to Australia:

1.       Horace Richard Ellis born 1884, died as a child in England.

2.       Millie Elizabeth (Ellis) Kennedy born 1885, migrated to Australia and settled in Western Australia.

3.       Hugh Alfred Ellis born 1887, stayed in England.

 Eventually, six of Alfred's ten children immigrated to Australia, settling on both the west and east coasts, a few moving frequently between states. This headcount does not include those that moved within the United Kingdom to Ireland and Scotland. Not everyone in the family would have the time, the money or the inclination to send letters and mementoes

Below is an example of two images found in someone’s collection of a man whose identity currently eludes us. No duplicates have yet been located.

Photographer unknown, Nameless gent, no details known, photo from Jim Bennett's Private Photo  Collection currently held by Dorothy Bennett [T023]

Photographer unknown, Nameless gent, no details known, photo from Jim Bennett's Private Photo Collection currently held by Dorothy Bennett [T023]

His face is similar to others in the collection perhaps a brother or cousin to someone, where and when the photos were taken is not known. But one day we might get lucky and be able to identify this gentleman and how he may or may not be related to our family or perhaps the wider family.

Other images relating to Alfred’s family can be seen in the following places

Inspiration

Sepia Saturday - Using old Images as Prompt for New Reflections – Prompt 620 : 7 May 2022

Useful Links

For more about Alfred Ellis's descendants see the Family Group Sheet for Alfred Ellis on WikiTree

Related Posts

Comparing two identical photos located on different sides of Australia 

A photograph of Alfred Edward Leigh Ellis with his Zither 

Article containing images of Walter Todman who married Martha Sarah Ellis

Article containing an image of Ted otherwise known as Edward Ellis 

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Author 2022, Sandra Williamson

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Sources

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[i] Personal memory of the Sandra Williamson, moderator of the EllisCousins on Yahoo Groups, recalled 2020

[ii] General Register Office, England, Death certificate of Martha Lee, died 2 September 1888 while residing at 245 St George Road, Camberwell registration district, sub-district St George in the County of Surrey; GRO Reference: 1880 S Quarter in CAMBERWELL Volume 01D Page 534 [Aged 40]

[iii] 1881 English Census, Household of Alfred Lee, widower, residing with children Martha, Kate, Charles, Walter & Frederick Lee at 245 St Georges Rd, Camberwell registration district, sub-district St George, County of London, Enumeration District 21; RG11; Piece: 698; Folio: 21; Page: 35