Annabella Boswell's Papers
Annabella Boswell's Papers
| Country | Australia |
|---|---|
| Repository | Port Macquarie Museum, 22 Clarence Street Port Macquarie NSW 2444 |
| Section | Inscriptions on Asia-Pacific National Registers |
| Gender Dimension | Stories from women's perspective |
| GEM | GEM 1– Gender Sensitive |
| Description | Annabella Alexandra Campbell Innes [1826-1914] was born and lived in New South Wales (including several years at Lake Innes, Port Macquarie). She moved to Scotland with her husband, Andrew Boswell, and children in 1856. She was a prolific diarist and letter writer who wanted to pass on her memories of her life in Australia and so she collected letters including copies from members of her family and rewrote her own journals, eventually publishing some of them. The Papers include Annabella's journal entries, letters, her transcriptions of other family correspondence, her sketches and drawings which are mainly botanical in nature, some photographs, some papers relating to her mother, and some correspondence between her husband Patrick Boswell and his family. Annabella Boswell’s journals and letters, most dating from 1843 (begun when she was 16 years old) to after her marriage are a rare example of a young woman’s personal writings from nineteenth-century regional Australia. Annabella Boswell’s journals vividly describe the life of landed gentry in a newly colonised country with the honest eyes of a teenager/young woman who had highly developed writing skills. In 1972 the Port Macquarie Historical Society purchased a large collection of papers and documents from the Boswell family in Scotland. These included Annabella Boswell's journals and correspondence. In 1999 the Society formed the current collection by selling the papers in the wider Boswell collection that were not related to Annabel Boswell. The documentary heritage was inscribed onto the Australian Memory of the World register in 2019. |
| Reference | https://www.amw.org.au/register/listings/annabella-boswells-papers-1826-1901 https://ehive.com/collections/3977/objects/838256/archives-annabella-boswell-nee-innes Photo credit: © National Committee of Australia Memory of the World |
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