Caroline Simpson Collection

Thomas McKenzie / photographer unknown

[189?]

1 photograph : ambrotype in gilt floral frame;

Shoalhaven district (N.S.W.) - History.
Meroogal (Nowra, N.S.W.)
Cambewarra (N.S.W.) - History
portraits
dairy farmers
McKenzie, Thomas, c1794-1892.

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.'

Meroogal ; M86/86

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Picture

43226