Í þriðja þætti Vesturfaranna var í stóru hlutverki Nelson Gerrard, sagnfræðingur- og skjalavörður á Nýja-Íslandi. Við skoðuðum safn hans á Eyrarbakka við Winnipegvatn, bækur, ljósmyndir, skjöl og ýmsa gripi.
Nú er komin fram smá viðbót við þessa sögu. Kona sem sá þáttinn bar kennsl á fólk sem var þar á mynd. Hún má teljast glögg, því myndirnar birtast einungis í stuttan tíma. Konan hafði samband við Nelson sem skrifar á Facebook:
What are the chances… The wedding photo of an Icelandic couple in Winnipeg was unidentified when it came to me as one of the pictures from an old album once owned by Sigtryggur Jónasson and his wife, Rannveig Briem – at one time of Möðruvellir, Icelandic River (Riverton), later of Selkirk and Winnipeg. This photo was among those shown recently on Icelandic television, in the third episode of a documentary about the emigration. It appeared in connection with an interview Egill Helgason did with me about the photo archive, etc. here at Eyrarbakki. A woman in Iceland had recently gone through an old album she had inherited from her grandmother, and from one of those photos (the one of the left) she recognized her great uncle Halldór Auðunsson, who had emigrated from Hafnarfjörður around 1882. Making that connection took a sharp eye, as you can see, as her photo is a later excerpt from the wedding photo. The bride in the wedding photo is Sigríður Sigurðardóttir, apparently from Reykjavík, and shortly after they married, she and Halldór moved to the West Coast where they lived in both Seattle and Victoria. There they separated after a short time – which likely explains why Sigríður was cut out of the later photo… It is very likely that Halldór, who had been an experienced sailor in Iceland, worked aboard Sigtryggur Jónasson’s steamship on Lake Winnipeg at one time, which would explain why a photo of him was in Sigtryggur and Rannveig’s album. The photo was taken in Winnipeg in 1888.
Og hér eru myndirnar, það má glöggt sjá að ljósmyndin af Halldóri er hluti af giftingarmyndinni af þeim Sigríði:
