Alma Plains and Adelaide, South Australia : an important pioneer settlers’ photograph album with portraits of members of families associated with the Church of Christ. 1860s-80s.

Quarto (290 x 230 mm), embossed green leather decorated in gilt (upper board detached and lacking backstrip); title leaf with later family member’s inscription identifying the original owners of the album as ‘Janet and William Howard, Alma Plains – Dalkey’; containing a total of [82] albumen print photographs – [73] in carte de visite format, [9] in larger cabinet card format – and [1] small tintype photograph, all window-mounted (i.e. they are removable); the majority of the sitters are identified either on the album page or on the verso of the photograph, sometimes accompanied by a brief biographical note (the annotations are in a mixture of nineteenth-century and more recent hands); many of the families appear to have a connection with the Alma Plains district and were apparently associated with the Church of Christ: surnames include Howard, Lawrie, McLachlan, Barr, Gore, Cope, Wilson, Good, Judd, Woolcock, Watson and McGregor; numerous South Australian studios are represented, including those of Edward Farndell, Townsend Duryea, Edwin Marchant, Spicer Adey, Otto von Hartitzsch, George Freeman, Rushton & Just, and Stump & Co.; a small number of the portraits are by Scottish studios; the photographs are all in good condition, and the album leaves are clean and free from foxing, (some occasional tears to the window mounts).