This small collection of photos is a recent buy from a favourite seller on eBay.

Paul shared these old photos on his Twitter/X site and I looked up Ebeneezer Williams, as did other followers of Paul, and found that he was a Photographer.

So when Paul listed them on eBay I just had to have them.

To see photos of a Photographer seems to be quite rare; either they didn’t write on the back of their own photos, or they didn’t have their own photos taken!

Ebeneezer Williams and his family.

In the autumn of 1850, in the market town of Hawkhurst, Ebeneezer Williams was born into a Kentish family already rooted in the Weald countryside. Surrounded by rolling countryside, hop gardens, orchards, woodland and winding lanes, Hawkhurst was considered one of the larger and more important villages in the area.

The High Street contained Inns, Alehouses, Blacksmiths, Grocers, Drapers, and other small family businesses.

His father, Samuel Williams, was only twenty-five, and his mother, Martha Ann Harris, was twenty-nine, when their son arrived in October of that year.

Before long, the family were settled in Hawkhurst, the village that would become the centre of Ebeneezer’s long and remarkable life.

As a child, Ebeneezer grew up among the changing rhythms of Victorian England. In 1853, when he was three years old, his brother William James and, five years later, another brother, Frank, arrived in Hawkhurst.

The brothers spent their youth in the Kent countryside, surrounded by orchards, narrow lanes, and village life.

Census records of 1851 and 1861 place young Ebeneezer at home in Hawkhurst with his parents and brothers, living the life of an ordinary rural family during a rapidly changing age.

By 1871, at the age of twenty-one, Ebeneezer was living in Highgate, Kent, still recorded with his family. Somewhere during these early adult years, he discovered the profession that would define his life, photography.

Photography in the nineteenth century was still something of a marvel, a way of capturing faces and moments that earlier generations could only have dreamed of preserving.

By 1881, back in Hawkhurst, Ebeneezer was recorded as a photographer, already building a reputation as a man skilled with camera and chemicals, portraits and light.

For decades, Ebeneezer would remain connected to his craft. Later census returns described him as a “Photographic Artist” and eventually a “General Photographer,” suggesting a respected local tradesman whose work may have captured weddings, families, shopkeepers, children, and the changing face of Hawkhurst itself.

Through his lens, countless ordinary lives were frozen into treasured keepsakes.

In January 1891, at the age of forty, Ebeneezer married Florence Edna Harris in Kent. Florence had been born in October 1867 in Derby, nearly seventeen years younger than her husband. Whatever paths had brought them together, they soon established their married life in Hawkhurst, where Ebeneezer was listed as head of the household and Florence as his wife.

Their home quickly became a lively family household. Their first child, Winifred, was born on 20 July 1892 in Hawkhurst. Four years later, on 23 April 1896, a son, Stanley, arrived, followed by their youngest child, Violet Doris, on 4 June 1898. The Williams children grew up in a home shaped by creativity and steady work.

By 1911, Winifred, then nineteen years old, was already assisting her father, perhaps helping in the photography business itself, learning the careful work that had occupied Ebeneezer for much of his life.

The Williams family remained deeply connected to Hawkhurst for decades. Census records from 1901, 1911, and 1921 all show Ebeneezer and Florence still there, raising their family and maintaining their home. Florence devoted herself to “Home Duties,” while Ebeneezer continued his photographic work well into old age.

Through the late Victorian era, the Edwardian years, the Great War, and into the twentieth century, the family witnessed enormous social change while remaining tied to their Kent roots.

Their daughter Winifred married John Albert Stapley in Cranbrook in July 1916, during the difficult years of the First World War. She later settled in Tonbridge and had a son, Robert Bryan Stapley, in 1929.

Stanley’s life took a different direction. He married Irene Channel in 1920 and moved to Middlesex, where he became a manager in welding and engineering works before later serving as a director and general manager in engineering and constructional work.

His career reflected the modern industrial world that had emerged far beyond the quiet lanes of Hawkhurst. Stanley and Irene had three children, first a daughter, Stella Mary, in 1921 and then twin boys, Stanley and Hubert, though sadly, Hubert died very soon after his birth in April 1925.

Violet Doris remained closest to home for many years. In 1927 she married Sidney William Huddart in Cranbrook, and two years later their daughter, June Winifred Huddart, was born. Violet would live a long life, eventually settling in Hailsham, where she died in 1993 at the remarkable age of ninety-five.

As Ebeneezer grew older, he endured the losses that come with a long life. His brother Frank died in Hawkhurst in May 1926, and the following year his brother William James passed away in Cranbrook. Yet Ebeneezer himself lived on into his eighty-fifth year, remaining in the village that had shaped almost his entire existence.

On 30 January 1936, Ebeneezer Williams died in Hawkhurst at the age of eighty-five. A few days later, on 3 February, he was buried there, laid to rest in the community where he had spent most of his life and career.

After forty-five years of marriage, Florence was left widowed. She survived him by only a year and a half, dying on 16 August 1937 in Westgate-on-Sea at the age of sixty-nine.

She, too, was taken back to Hawkhurst for burial.

Ebeneezer Williams family tree on Ancestry:

Ebeneezer Williams Family Tree

Together, Ebeneezer and Florence left behind more than dates and records. They left a family that spread from Kent to Surrey, Middlesex, Cumbria, and Sussex, carrying their story into later generations.

Ebeneezer’s profession as a photographer was especially fitting for a man whose own life now survives through fragments of history, census returns, certificates, family memories, and even photographs that still rest in albums or drawers today.

Through those surviving traces, the Williams family continues to look back across the years to the quiet Kent photographer who spent a lifetime preserving moments for others.

I have found the various old photos below for sale on eBay at the time of writing.

What a super selection if you are collecting old photos of this particular photographer.

You can contact me either by commenting here or via email at lynnswaffles@gmail.com 

Till next time then……….