Makers: Jill Bowman and Alison Jarden

Panel number: 217

Petition sheet number: 259

Person honouring: Ann Judson

Relationship to makers: Great-grandmother

Ann Sutherland was born in Helmsdale, Scotland in 1839. She emigrated to New Zealand and married James Judson, a farmer, at Woodend in 1869. They had a family of four boys and five girls.

The couple’s first house and stables were on land James obtained from his father, at the end of Judson’s Road. His threshing engine and mill were stored in sheds on his father’s property until the family moved to a new two-storied house on the Main North Road, built of timber cut from the Oxford bush.

Ann was 54 when she signed the suffrage petition. On the 1893 and 1896 electoral rolls her occupation was given as ‘wife’s duties’; in 1911 she was ‘married’.

Ann died at Woodend in 1919, aged 80 years.

Panel materials: We used tartan as the basis of the panel, with buttons representing the other 46 signatories and ribbons representing Ann’s forbears and descendants. I already had everything we used.