On September 7, 1856, two families, one that of Critchlow and Sarah (Stretch) Harris and their 5 children, the other that of her brother, Joseph Stretch, and his wife, Emma (Chadwick), and their 5 children, set sail from Liverpool, England, on the 519 ton barque, Isabel, for Prince Edward Island. They arrived in Charlottetown on October 11, at 10 p.m. In tracing their ancestry we start with the Welsh forebears of Critchlow Harris, in the Vale of Conwy in North Wales, beginning with the parents of Richard Morris (1720 - 1787), Critchlow Harris's great great grandparents. Silhouette portraits of them have been preserved by their descendants.

A Harris Family Exhibition was on show in the Robert Harris Gallery of the Confederation Centre of the Arts Gallery and Museum in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, from June, 1999, until April, 2000. It was then taken down, but the photographs show its two main components - the Family Tree Wall, and the The Family Room that replicated the Harris family museum 1910 - 1944.

In February, 2000, two months before the scheduled end of the Harris Family exhibition, the Confederation Centre administration abruptly and without cause dismissed the Gallery director, Mr. Terry Graff, to whose inspiration and leadership so much credit was due for the quality of the various Harris exhibitions in recent years. After that, for more than two years, the entire Harris Collection bequeathed to the Fathers of Confederation Trust by the Harris Family heirs in 1958 (after a commitment was made to them that the Collection would be exhibited) remained unexhibited, out of sight in the Centre Gallery basement. It was only after a CBC Arts reporter became curious as to why the Collection was not being exhibited that the Centre scheduled a Harris show in the summer of 2002.