A formal framed photo of the Burnett family gives a face to the owner of a mysterious 100-year-old photo album found in a box of donated books.
The rough-edged album with faded cover and threadbare binding was discovered by a volunteer at Hastings' Cranford Hospice Shop about three months ago.
"We quickly realised we had something very special," Hospice Shop retail manager Anke Hoggett-Schnebeck said. "I had it in my office for about a month, thinking it might have been donated accidentally, but no one came forward."
Behind the scenes Presbyterian Support East Coast fundraising database manager Jennie Crawley began researching names neatly handwritten beneath black-and-white images, including those of soldiers in Gallipoli during World War I. Three uniformed men featured heavily, all from Hawke's Bay, all are believed to have enlisted at the same time. From detailed descriptions of people pictured, she traced some reccuring Hawke's Bay family surnames, including Burnett, Campbell and McAuley. Yesterday a handful of their descendants gathered to see the images.
An inscription inside revealed the album belonged to an M Burnett, dated 1914, whom Ms Crawley believes received it as a Christmas present from her brother Bill in 1913. Both siblings feature in a family photo brought to the Hospice by Kay Burnett yesterday, which put a face to the name of this remarkable piece of local history.
