The displayed images are selected from an album of 83 botanical paintings and one drawing, together with a title page completed by Charlotte Anna Lefroy while she was in Bermuda with her husband, Major-General John Henry Lefroy who was Governor from 1871 to 1877. According to National Trust records, Mr and Mrs H C of North Carolina gave the album to the Historic Monuments Trust, now the Bermuda National Trust, in 1955.
Born in 1824, Lady Lefroy was the daughter of Lieut. Colonel Thomas and Charlotte Dundas of Carron Hall, Stirlingshire in Scotland. She married Colonel Armine Mountain in 1845 and spent six years in India where her husband was Adjutant General of Her Majesty’s Forces. She was 30 when Colonel Mountain died in 1854.
In 1860 she married General John Henry Lefroy, a noted soldier and scientist. It was a second marriage for both and he had four children by his first marriage. His two youngest children, daughters Emily and Maude, came to Bermuda with them.
While in Bermuda Governor Lefroy brought in a gardener from Kew Gardens and imported many different plants to test their suitability for Bermuda’s climate. It is not known whether he brought in any of the plants illustrated, but some are no longer found here.
The Bermuda Archives has a collection of Bermuda fish paintings done by Lady Lefroy during this time, but there are no known paintings by her from before her arrival in Bermuda in 1871.