Grandfather Charles Stanley Braine with his mother and siblings

Standing: Charles Stanley Braine (grandfather) and sister Muriel. Seated: great-grandmother Adline and her older daughter. Seated on the ground: brother John, who appears to be sitting on a leopard skin.

The Victorian clothes would place this photo in the 1890s. The location would have been a tea plantation in the Dimbula area. My great-great-grandfather came to Ceylon as a coffee planter in the hill country and, when the coffee plantations were wiped out by disease, became a tea planter. His son, Charles Frederick Braine, was also a tea planter. What made Charles Stanley, my grandfather, become a coconut planter in the low country remains a mystery.