Tag: Kangaroo Valley Tasmania

Group at the Lady Franklin Museum, Kangaroo Valley, Tasmania

Thomas Nevin’s stereographs from the Pedder collection

May 11, 2020

Lawyers, barristers, magistrates, politicians, police superintendents, detectives, their families and their prisoners were photographed by Thomas J. Nevin from the late 1860s to the 1880s. The Pedder family of magistrates and police officers, the family of solicitor John Woodcock Graves the younger, the McVilly family of teachers and police officers, and the family of Attorney-General the Hon. W. R. Giblin, all made use of Thomas J. Nevin’s commission with the colonial government’s Lands and Survey Department, the Municipal Police Office and Mayor’s Court, and the Hobart City Corporation to provide them with stereographic views and carte-de-visite portraits. The stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1868-1870 of the Lady Franklin Museum, Kangaroo Valley bearing the inscription “A. Pedder” on verso, is one of least four held in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery collections. Solicitor Alfred Pedder (1881-1977) may have kept these stereographs by Thomas Nevin from the estate of his father, Police Superintendent Frederick Pedder (1841-1923) who was a colleague of Nevin’s at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart. Alfred Pedder’s daughter Sylvia in turn may have donated them to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in the 1970s … More Thomas Nevin’s stereographs from the Pedder collection

Gold seekers Thomas Nevin, John Thorpe and Duncan Chisholm 1869

September 17, 2018

It may have been an April Fool’s Day joke or it may have been a bonanza. The Tasmanian Times, which regularly published information for and about photographer Thomas J. Nevin and his father John Nevin snr throughout the decade of the 1860s, may have wittingly or otherwise informed their readers on the first day of April, 1869, that Thomas Nevin and his fellow gold seekers, John Thorpe jun, former licensee of the Bush Inn at Port Cygnet, and Duncan Chisholm, school master at Rokeby, Clarence Plains, were confident enough of finding sufficient gold deposits in the area to suggest that a subsidy from local residents would encourage them to continue with further exploration. … More Gold seekers Thomas Nevin, John Thorpe and Duncan Chisholm 1869

The house called “Tolosa” on the Hull estate

October 26, 2017

Where on the vast estate of 2560 acres granted to George Hull in 1824, 5.2 miles or 4.5 nautical miles north of Hobart was the house called “Tolosa” built? Was it on the Kangaroo Valley (now Lenah Valley) side adjacent to the 400 acres he sold to Lady Jane Franklin (1839) which she named Ancanthe and where she built her museum, or was it located further north on the Glenorchy side of what is now Kalang Avenue, 8 miles north of Hobart? Where was the house located in relation to the present Tolosa Street, Glenorchy? What was its architectural style and why was it called “Tolosa”? Do two photographs of houses taken by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1868 in the area where his father John Nevin built a house at Kangaroo Valley in 1853 show off the house called “Tolosa”? This lithograph of 1859, though not clear, shows enough of the house to indicate that its facade had a verandah with a series of arches, and eight entrances and windows in total, all facing north. … More The house called “Tolosa” on the Hull estate

John Nevin senior’s land grant 1859 at Port Cygnet

March 12, 2017

In 1859, John Nevin snr was granted ten acres one rood and seventeen perches in the parish of Bedford on the Huon River near Cygnet, about 60 kms south west of Hobart, but it appears he never moved his family from Kangaroo Valley to take up permanent residence on the grant. He may have used the land, however, to cultivate orchards, grow vegetables, and make jam for export. In 1870 he exhibited marrows at the Industrial Bazaar at the Hobart Town Hall. In 1873 he presented an exhibit of peat to a meeting of the Royal Society of Tasmania, and in 1877, he exported jam on the Southern Cross to the colony of Victoria. The peat may have been extracted from Kangaroo Valley, known originally as Sassafras Gully in the 1840s, a valley rich with the type of flora that grows as ‘wet’ and/or mixed forest in Tasmania. … More John Nevin senior’s land grant 1859 at Port Cygnet

Nevin’s coal mine stereograph for Messrs Sims and Stops

October 30, 2015

Mr Nevin, photographer, Elizabeth-street, appears in this advertisement as an agent able to take orders for the delivery of coal from the Excelsior Coal Mine which was located on Mr Ebenezer Sims property at Kangaroo Bottom (Kangaroo Valley New Town), in close proximity to the home of Nevin’s parents. This coal was for domestic use but may have been included in the coal specimens which were exported to the Royal Colonial Institute, accompanied by James Boyd on board the Ethel in 1874. … More Nevin’s coal mine stereograph for Messrs Sims and Stops

The concertina player 1860s

December 29, 2014

This untitled stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin, taken ca. 1868 of a group of 19 people sitting by a stream, including a woman holding a concertina, is held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Ref: Q1994.56.31. Photographed together with its blank verso on 10th November, 2014 at the TMAG (by this weblog), the stereo is one of a series, some bearing Nevin’s New Town stamp, some blank, originally attributed and sequenced by Specialist Collections librarian G. T. Stilwell at the State Library and Archives Office of Tasmania in the 1970s while preparing an exhibition of Nevin’s portraits of convicts (at the QVMAG with John McPhee 1977). … More The concertina player 1860s

Ancanthe Park, Lenah Valley, Tasmania

Miss Nevin and Morton Allport

April 16, 2014

When the Nevin family of Kangaroo Valley, Hobart, sat down to read The Mercury on the 4th October 1865, they must have despaired at the notice it contained about their application for aid of £25 p.a. to open a school at Kangaroo Valley, especially Mary Ann Nevin, 18 years old, and determined to start her working life as a teacher. The reporter had mispelt the family name – McNevis instead of Nevin. A week later, when The Mercury reported that Mary Ann’s application was rejected, the reporter again mispelt her name as NEVEN. … More Miss Nevin and Morton Allport

Cascades Asylum Hobart 1890s

Nevin Street and the Cascades Prison for Males

January 23, 2014

The 1935 Hobart Walkers Club map (detail above) shows two very distinct routes to the southeast which John Nevin might have chosen in the 1870s on his journey from the family farm at Kangaroo Valley, situated next to the Lady Franklin Museum where Thomas and John’s father John Nevin snr had built their cottage. Whether on foot or horseback, the first and longer route he could have taken was along Kangaroo Valley road, alternatively titled Lenah Valley Road by 1922, to the waterhole and the cabin named by the Old Hobartians (alumni of Hobart High School) as their own by 1935. He would then veer south on the path to the New Town Falls, crossing Brushy Creek until arriving at the edge of a very steep ravine . Once there, he would join the McRobies track until arriving at the Hobart Rivulet, passing below the Cascades Brewery. The track, much wider at that point, passed by the cemetery, and ended directly opposite the Cascades Prison … More Nevin Street and the Cascades Prison for Males

Lady Franklin Museum, Hobart Tasmania

John Watt Beattie and the Nevin family legacy

January 15, 2014

The friendship between these two photographers, Thomas J. Nevin and John Watt Beattie extended back to 1887 on the death of Thomas Nevin’s father, John Nevin at the family house and farm adjacent to the Lady Franklin Museum at Kangaroo Valley (renamed Lenah Valley in 1922). It had long been a wish of John Nevin that the Franklin Museum be restored to its original purpose when first built on Jane Franklin’s land, named Ancanthe, as a library and botanical museum, but by 1887, it was little more than a storage shed for local orchardists and farmers. As a gesture towards reviving John Nevin’s wish, before his own death in 1930, John Watt Beattie approached the Hobart City Council with a proposal to house his vast convictaria collection in the Lady Franklin Museum at Kangaroo Valley (Lenah Valley) but the Hobart City Council declined. … More John Watt Beattie and the Nevin family legacy

John Nevin snr and the Genge family

October 19, 2012

The Electoral Rolls and Valuation Rolls for the district of Glenorchy, Tasmania show John Nevin occupying the school house, Wesleyan chapel and dwelling at Kangaroo Valley from at least 1854 up to 1887, the year of his death. In 1875, he applied to the Education Board to establish a night school for adult males. His first wife, Mary Ann Nevin nee Dickson, mother of his three surviving children, died the same year. John Nevin’s second wife Martha Genge became step mother to his two surviving children in 1879 – his sons photographer Thomas James Nevin and Constable John (William John aka Jack Nevin). Their only surviving sister Mary Ann who had married John Carr, son of the late Captain James Carr, at the Wesleyan Chapel, Kangaroo Valley, on May 12, 1877, died shortly after childbirth aged 34 yrs on July 27, 1879 at her residence, Sandridge, Victoria. The child, a daughter named Mary Ann Carr survived and was taken back to Hobart to live with her grandfather John Nevin snr. … More John Nevin snr and the Genge family

T. Nevin Photo impress on stereo of ferns

T. NEVIN Photo: the blindstamp on stereographs

May 23, 2012

This stereograph on salt paper, which was produced by Thomas J. Nevin in the late 1860s of Tasmanian ferns, bears his blind stamp on the viewer’s left side, viz. “T. NEVIN PHOTO”. It belongs to a series of ferns taken around the foothills of Mt Wellington now held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. This example is held in a private collection of Nevin descendants. … More T. NEVIN Photo: the blindstamp on stereographs

The Excelsior Coal Mine at New Town 1874

May 16, 2010

Mr Nevin, photographer, Elizabeth-street, appears in this advertisement as an agent able to take orders for the delivery of coal from the Excelsior Coal Mine which was located on Mr Ebenezer Sims property at Kangaroo Bottom (Kangaroo Valley New Town), in close proximity to the home of Nevin’s parents. This coal was for domestic use but may have been included in the coal specimens which were exported to the Royal Colonial Institute, accompanied by James Boyd on board the Ethel in 1874. … More The Excelsior Coal Mine at New Town 1874

A Zoological Curiosity at the Town Hall 1877

September 10, 2009

“A ZOOLOGICAL CURIOSITY. — Mr. Nevin, Town Hall keeper, yesterday brought to our office what Artemus Ward would undoubtedly have christened “an interesting little cus.” It is of the feline order, and has a perfect black coat. The head and body and voice are decidedly pussy’s; but there the relationship with that useful domestic animal ceases. The legs belong to the order of kangaroo rat, and it is quite amusing to see the little stranger perch himself up on his haunches, or drag himself slowly along by the aid of the fore part of the fore legs, which instead of being erect, as in the cat, falls flat on the ground, and so produces that roundness of the body which is the marked feature in the kangaroo… … More A Zoological Curiosity at the Town Hall 1877

John Nevin: “My Cottage in  the Wilderness” 1868

September 1, 2009

My Cottage in the Wilderness

Tir’d at last of Ocean dangers
I’ve sought and found a lone retreat,
Oft in youth deceiv’d by strangers
My home is now where friends may meet.
In a Vale by woods surrounded,
Romantic scenes I must confess, –
A rural building I have founded,
My cottage in the wilderness… … More John Nevin: “My Cottage in  the Wilderness” 1868

John Nevin and Gould’s white goshawk

August 31, 2009

“WHITE HAWK.- We were yesterday shown a fine specimen of this bird wounded in Kangaroo Valley by Mr. Nevin. The bird is the common White Hawk (Leucospiza Novae Hollandiae) of this colony and Australia, and is well figured in Gould’s large work on Australian Birds under the name of Astur Novae Hollandiae. Gould was formerly of opinion that the White Hawk was merely an albino variety of the New Holland Goshawk, but in his more recent work the “Handbook of Birds of Australia,” he has placed it under the genus Leucospiza. This hawk is by no means rare. … More John Nevin and Gould’s white goshawk

The early deaths of Thomas Nevin’s sisters and niece, Rebecca, Mary and Minnie Carr

August 27, 2009

John Nevin snr married again in 1879, at the age of 71 yrs, to widow Martha Salter nee Genge, aged 46 years old. The deaths of all these female members of Thomas Nevin’s family may have prompted his father to take another wife as a gesture of in locus parentis for his granddaughter Mary Ann or Minnie Carr who survived her mother’s death less than a month after her birth. Mary Ann or Minnie Carr, as she was called, was taken as a baby from Victoria and from her father John Carr’s care, back to Tasmania into the Nevin family home at Kangaroo Valley in 1878. Called Minnie, she is not to be confused with her cousin Minnie Drew nee Mary Ann Nevin, Thomas and Elizabeth’s daughter born in 1884, named Mary Ann after her grandmother, aunt and cousin..

John Nevin snr’s grand-daughter Mary Ann or Minnie Carr was cared for by his second wife Martha Nevin (nee Genge, widow of Salter) and moved with her from Kangaroo Valley on John Nevin’s death in 1887, but Minnie Carr too succumbed to death in 1898. She died at Martha Nevin’s house in Patrick St. Hobart of internal bleeding, shortly before her 21st birthday (1878-1898). … More The early deaths of Thomas Nevin’s sisters and niece, Rebecca, Mary and Minnie Carr

Key dates in Thomas Nevin’s life

April 1, 2009

From the early 1860s Thomas Nevin operated a photographic studio at New Town with the business name of “Thomas Nevins”, i.e. the “s” signifying the possessive, as in “the studio of Thomas Nevin”. By 1865 he was assistant to photographer Alfred Bock whose residence and studio he leased from A. Biggs at 138-140 Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town on Alfred Bock’s departure for Victoria in 1867 (Hobart Town Gazettes 1870s). Nevin maintained the business name of the studio, The City Photographic Establishment, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town. With partner Robert Smith, they formed the firm Nevin & Smith, producing stereographic views and hand-tinted studio portraits (TMAG and Private Collections). The firm Nevin & Smith was commissioned to take an album of portraits of Tasmanian children in 1868 to be presented to the Duke of Edinburgh (State Library of Victoria Collection). However, the partnership was short-lived. Robert Smith moved to Goulburn, NSW and the firm known as Nevin & Smith was dissolved on 22nd February 1868, undersigned by Thomas Nevin’s solicitor, later Attorney-General, W.R. Giblin. Thomas Nevin continued with the business name, the City Photographic Establishment at the same address, and exhibited photographs of Melville St under snow (1868) and A Party at the Rocking Stone Mt Wellington (1870) at the Wellington Park Exhibitions (TMAG Collection). He also exhibited stereoscopic views, prize cards and cartes-de-visite at the Tasmanian Poultry Society’s annual exhibition at the Town Hall in August 1869 and the Town Hall Bazaar on 1st April, 1870 (Mercury Friday 1 Apr 1870 Page 2 ). For his work as the firm of Nevin & Smith, he was granted a colonial Royal Warrant, and for his work with the Lands and Survey Department of the colonial government, he was granted another colonial Royal warrant by authority. By 1870 Nevin was providing photographs of mining and reservoir works at the Huon and Cascades on government commission, as well as providing group portraits and landscapes for tourists to the Lady Franklin Museum and and John Franklin’s Tree at Kangaroo Valley, Hobart. … More Key dates in Thomas Nevin’s life

Oral history: Nevin family at Kangaroo Valley

February 6, 2009

Mary Anne Nevin was the 5 year-old member of the Nevin family placed on the Fairlie sick list on the voyage out to Hobart, arriving July 1852.On board was the entire family of young Thomas Nevin, then aged 10 yrs. His father, John Nevin, pensioner guard (b. Ireland 1808) worked the family’s passage. He was accompanied by Mary Nevin, his wife (b.England 1810) and four children:

Thomas James Nevin: (1842-1923) died at age 80
Mary Ann Nevin: (1844-1878) died at age 34
Rebecca Jane Nevin (1847-1865) died at age 18
William John Nevin (1852-1891) died at age 39 … More Oral history: Nevin family at Kangaroo Valley

Nevins on sick list during voyage out on the Fairlie 1852

August 14, 2008

The Fairlie prepared for departure from the UK from the Isle of Wight on March 2, 1852, embarking convicts and juvenile exiles from the Parkhurst Prison. While conditions on board must have been rudimentary for women and children accompanying a crew member, for a mother and baby it must have been a floating hell. … More Nevins on sick list during voyage out on the Fairlie 1852

John Nevin on the death of William Genge

John Nevin’s Wesleyan Lament

November 9, 2007

Thomas J. Nevin took this photo of his father John Nevin snr (1808 Ireland -1887 Hobart) in the studio at 140 Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town, ca. 1874. He must have decided it appropriate to capture his father in the pose of writing because John Nevin was indeed a writer, a published poet and a journalist. He was also a Wesleyan, a close friend of William Genge, lay preacher and sexton at the Wesleyan Chapel, Hobart. On his friend’s death in 1881, John Nevin penned this lament … … More John Nevin’s Wesleyan Lament

Captain Hector Charles James Horatio AXUP,  Thomas Nevin’s brother-in-law

August 30, 2007

In his “Unique Booklet” Hector roams over subjects as diverse as the launch of the last of the wooden three-deckers, the “Royal Albert” in 1854 which he witnessed as a school boy attending the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich; the good looks of Princess Alexandra of Denmark; Darwinism; Biblical Geometria; the Apocalypse; the Launceston Marine Board; “British Israel Truth” and Zionism; and a final word on the attitude of Christian men to Disarmament. He was in the end both disillusioned and traumatised by the Great War (World War I). … More Captain Hector Charles James Horatio AXUP,  Thomas Nevin’s brother-in-law

The Derwent from 270 Lenah Valley Rd, Hobart, Tasmania

The Kangaroo Valley house & New Town stereographs ca. 1868

July 25, 2007

“AUGUSTA (Co. Buckingham) is a postal village and residential suburb of Hobart Town, in the police district of Hobart, and electoral district of Glenorchy. It is situate on the main road from Hobart Town to Launceston, about 2 miles from the former place, and on the New Town Rivulet, which empties itself in to the Derwent, near Risdon. A portion of Mount Wellington overlooks the district. There are no mills or manufactories in Augusta at present, except a pottery. The surrounding district is agricultural to a large extent. There are several coal seams in the district; two or three are being worked, and produce very good domestic fuel. The communication with Hobart Town is by ‘busses and other conveyances which run hourly. The city of Hobart Town adjoins Augusta N.W. There is one hotel in the village, the Harvest Home. The surrounding country is undulating and hilly. The population numbers about 300 persons. There are places of worship as follows: Church of England, Church of Rome, and Wesleyan Church…” … More The Kangaroo Valley house & New Town stereographs ca. 1868

Group at the Lady Franklin Museum, Kangaroo Valley, Tasmania

At Lady Franklin’s Museum, Kangaroo Valley

June 28, 2007

The Pedder Collection (TMAG)
Lawyers, barristers, magistrates, politicians, police superintendents, detectives, their families and their prisoners were photographed by Thomas J. Nevin from the late 1860s to the 1880s. The Pedder family of magistrates and police officers, the family of solicitor John Woodcock Graves the younger, the McVilly family of teachers and police officers, and the family of Attorney-General the Hon. W. R. Giblin, all made use of Thomas J. Nevin’s commission with the colonial government’s Lands and Survey Department, the Municipal Police Office and Mayor’s Court, and the Hobart City Corporation to provide them with stereographic views and carte-de-visite portraits. The stereograph by Thomas J. Nevin ca. 1868-1870 of the Lady Franklin Museum, Kangaroo Valley bearing the inscription “A. Pedder” on verso, is one of least four held in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery collections. Solicitor Alfred Pedder (1881-1977) may have kept these stereographs by Thomas Nevin from the estate of his father, Police Superintendent Frederick Pedder (1841-1923) who was a colleague of Nevin’s at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart. Alfred Pedder’s daughter Sylvia in turn may have donated them to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in the 1970s … More At Lady Franklin’s Museum, Kangaroo Valley

John Nevin’s marriages to Mary Ann Dickson and Martha Genge

June 9, 2007

Disambiguation: Mary Ann Nevin
Thomas Nevin’s sister Mary Ann Nevin had married master mariner John Carr at the Wesleyan Chapel close to the Nevin family home at Kangaroo Valley Tasmania on 3rd May, 1877, but she died one year later at Sandridge, Victoria only 22 days after giving birth to her only child, a daughter also named Mary Ann. The only surviving child of this marriage was named after three Nevin family members; her deceased mother Mary Ann Carr nee Nevin; her mother’s mother, i.e. grandmother Mary Ann Nevin nee Dickson; and her first cousin Mary Ann Drew nee Nevin, also known as Minnie, last daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Nevin. … More John Nevin’s marriages to Mary Ann Dickson and Martha Genge

Thomas and Elizabeth Nevin wedding, Hobart July 1871

Thomas & Elizabeth Nevin’s Wedding Photograph 1871

April 13, 2007

This photograph was taken at Thomas Nevin’s studio, The City Photographic Establishment, 140 Elizabeth St. Hobart Town, possibly by his younger brother Jack (Constable John Nevin or W. J. Nevin). The same studio decor – the lozenge-patterned carpet and floral-patterned drape – appears in several extant studio portraits by Thomas Nevin of family members and private clientele up to the mid-1870s. This is an albumen print on a buff carte-de-visite mount. Someone created a doodling in ink or biro in the lower left-hand corner of the image on the carpet, possibly tracing a photochemical stain. There is no studio stamp on the verso, indicating the image was taken by a member within the family, for family viewing only. … More Thomas & Elizabeth Nevin’s Wedding Photograph 1871

The New Town studio stereographs

April 9, 2007

The New Town stereographs include views of farms, schools, churches, houses, and mines at nearby Kangaroo Valley where the Nevin family resided, and portraits of groups, including visitors to the Lady Franklin Museum, Nevin family members and friends. The collection of Nevin’s stereographs held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery mostly date from 1868 to the early 1870s. … More The New Town studio stereographs