Picture

St John's Cemetery, Parramatta, around July 1870 / American and Australasian Photographic Company

American and Australasian Photographic Company.

1870

1 carte-de-visite ; sepia toned ; 6.5 x 10.5 cm.

Verso carries the printed trade label of the "American and Australasian Photographic Company / Melbourne Office 73 Little Collins St / Sydney Office 4 Barrack St" and is numbered, in pencil: 11532.

cemeteries
headstones
fences
parsonages
brick walls
St. John's Cemetery (Parramatta, N.S.W.)

This view of the brick-walled burial ground of St. John's shows the cemetery spread out along the slope of the hill beneath the parsonage of St. John's. The oldest surviving sandstone memorial in the cemetery dates from 1791. Governor Macquarie had the cemetery enlarged and enlcosed by a bank and ditch. The brick perimeter wall was built in 1821-1823.
The photographer Beaufoy Merlin and his American and Australasian Photographic Company arrived in Sydney from Victoria around July 1870, via several country towns in New South Wales. In an advertisement placed in the Sydney Morning Herald on 21 September 1870 he announced that they had "now just completed taking nearly 800 views of Parramatta alone". This photograph must be one of those views.

Shylie & Ken Brown Parramatta, a town caught in time, 1870 Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1995, pp.77, 127; Andrew Sharp: The world, the flesh & the devil. The life and opinions of Samuel Marsden in England and the Antipodes, 1765-1838, Auckland University Press, 2016. Facing page 665.

CSL&RC PIC: small picture file : American & Australasian Photographic Co. ; Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection

You may save or print this image for research and study. If you wish to use it for any other purposes, you must contact Sydney Living Museums to request permission.

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