Maker: Winifred Clarke

Panel number: 243

Petition sheet number: 299

Person honouring: Sarah [Frances] Neale

Relationship to makers: Husband’s great-grandmother, on his mother’s side

Sarah Frances Botting was born in 1857, the eighth child of Jane and Robert Botting. She was a woman with many craft skills, including sock-knitting.

Aged nine she came from Hindmarsh in South Australia with her mother, brothers, and sister to New Zealand.

She married Joseph Neale, a miner, in June 1875 and they had eight children.

The family was at Livingstone in North Otago when Sarah signed the 1893 petition and enrolled to vote after that.

Gardening, knitting, and crochet were her main interests besides her family. She would knit a sock a day and samples of her fine crochet are still treasured by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Her most treasured possession was her wedding ring, which was made of gold from the claim. Once while gardening she lost it. Shortly afterwards they moved house. It was her joy when it was found in the head of a cabbage and returned to her by the house’s new occupants!

Sarah was 95 when she died in 1952.

Panel materials: Single bedsheet that was owned by my husband’s mother. The three crochet pieces were passed down by family members. All the lace came from my stash.