The second important photo appeared in a book called “Meet the Pioneers. Early Families of the Milton-Ulladulla District with Photographs” by Joanne Ewin (1991). This is a fabulous book full of family pictures with everyone named and a complete index. There is an entry for the Hapgoods – featuring two photos of my direct ancestors, but in this post I will focus on one of the photos of Richard Hapgood & Jane Wearing (my 2nd great grandparents).

The picture that appears in the Milton Ulladulla Pioneers book is this one: my 2nd great grandparents, in their later years. Richard Hapgood died in 1917, and so I guess this photo is taken around 1890-1900?. Its a pretty good photo overall and great to have overall. The look generally like happy people – they look healthy , have laugh lines rather than scowls, and seem fairly relaxed and definitely not stern despite the formal photo. Jane Hapgood is even smiling slightly in this photo.

Sitting in a pile of family photos my mother had sent me was this photo. Initially I glanced at it and thought it was the same as the photo above, but its not: in this version of photo they are both wearing hats and its a lot higher resolution. I don’t have any notes of who has the original photo, but its fantastic – look at her bonnet and the details of the lace on the front of Jane’s dress! If only we had this bonnet still in the family! She is still smiling slightly in this photo also.

I remember my Mum being super excited about finding this photo, and decades later when I became interested and realised the two photos were different I was excited all over again! The other cool thing about both of these photos is that my Dad has the same eyes as his great-grandfather. The Hapgood (and later Waddell) genes seem to be fairly strong…..

[1] “Meet the Pioneers. Early Families of the Milton-Ulladulla District with Photographs” by Joanne Ewin (1991). Out of print but can be found in local libraries and sometimes pops up on ebay and abebooks.com or similar secondhand book sites.