Image Ref : VAR06 0093.tif

'M.A.R.P. 1898'

This is one of nine images from a photograph album that was handed in to the Oxfam shop in Totnes. An article in the Totnes Times (date unknown) tried unsuccessfully to trace the identities of those shown. However, very brief information on a few of them, together with research online, has enabled us to identify most of them and provided strong clues to the others. The change of name from ‘Prideaux’ (image VAR06 0090) to ‘Pridham’ arose when Susanna Rachel Prideaux married Charles Pridham. The three key images in the identification process were VAR06 0090, VAR06 0091 and VAR06 0096. Mary Augusta Rachel Pridham was born in Barton Regis, Gloucestershire, in late 1877, the daughter of Ernest Pridham (VAR06 0097). He had married Marie Rachelle Rouget (also known as Mary Rachel) in early 1877. Rouget is a Guernsey name, which is where she was born. In this photograph, it is recorded that she was aged 20 years and 8 months and that the photographer was Albert P. Steer, 1 Buckland Terrace, Plymouth, indicating that she returned to England at some point. However, she eventually married Frederick William Reston in New Zealand, had a son (David Prideaux Pridham Reston) in 1916, and died in New Plymouth on 2 October 1945. She is buried at New Plymouth.