Mrs Archibald Douglas (née Caroline Prentice) and her daughters, Helen and Janet

This charming portrait of Mrs Douglas and her two youngest daughters captures a group of Scottish immigrants soon after their arrival in Otago. Contrasting images of the two girls in later life can be seen alongside (Helen Hutton to the left and Janet Ramsay to the right).

It is fascinating to compare their faces at an older age, still clearly recognisable as the young girls who arrived on the Jura in 1858. Helen was ten at that time and Janet seven, and these ages seem a reasonable match for the girls in the portrait. This makes the image a very useful device for ‘de-aging’ all of the other portraits on display. Many of the elderly men and women in the photographs would also have been young, if not children, when they arrived in Otago. Helen and Janet’s faces provide an ideal point of comparison against which to consider the other faces.

The Douglas family was from St Cuthbert‘s parish in central Edinburgh. Caroline’s husband, Archibald Douglas, had been a soldier and prominent Scottish Freemason. Forced to retire from the army by a sword wound, he was given a responsible position at the Edinburgh General Post Office before his death in 1858. The family was therefore rather better off than the average Otago settler.

It is unclear why Mrs Douglas decided to emigrate with her seven children but many Scots saw the colonies as places of greater opportunity for coming generations. The two girls that appear in this portrait certainly justified such aspirations, albeit by making ‘good marriages’. Helen married David Con Hutton, the Scottish art teacher who came to Dunedin to head its new School of Art in 1870. His first wife had died soon after arrival and Helen replaced her in 1872. They were to have 10 children together while David Hutton made his mark training the artists and teachers who would be responsible for art education across New Zealand.

Janet meanwhile married Keith Ramsay, a Perthshire-born shipping agent whose Dunedin agency was a major player in shipping and trading activities from the southern New Zealand ports. He had diverse business interests, particularly in sawmilling and the timber trade. Keith Ramsay was also prominent in public life, both on the Otago Harbour Board and the Dunedin City Council. Three years after their marriage in 1871 he was elected Mayor of Dunedin, at 30 years of age the youngest incumbent of that office in the city’s history. Janet and Keith had a family of three sons and six daughters and lived in considerable comfort as members of Dunedin’s business elite. Janet devoted her time to community service.

Caroline Douglas would have been vindicated by her daughters’ successful marriages. She died at Mosgiel in 1886. Helen Hutton died in Dunedin in 1927 and her younger sister Janet in 1930.