Maker: Lyn Adamson

Panel number: 244

Petition sheet number: 301

Person honouring: Amelia Dale

Relationship to maker: Great-grandmother

Amelia was born in St Just, Penwith, Cornwall to Jane and John Trembath and was baptised in October 1847. In 1861, she was living with her mother and four siblings in St Just.

When she was 19, she married John Dale, a tin miner. They had three children, Eliza, Annie, and Emily in Cornwall before migrating to New Zealand on the Wellington in March 1883.

Amelia and John settled in Oamaru where John worked in the woollen mills as a dyer’s assistant. Two more children were born in Oamaru – Millicent (my grandmother) and John.

Amelia signed the suffrage petition in Oamaru and was enrolled to vote in subsequent elections.

My mother, Noeleen Dale Bowman, spoke of Amelia with great affection – Amelia was her favourite relative “she was the sweetest and most loving person you could ever meet”.

While my grandmother was busy with her music and the JC Williamson’s orchestra, Amelia helped raise my mother. My mother lived with Amelia, John, Emily, and her parents in a “very busy household, with aunts and uncles coming and going – Grandma Amelia always seemed to be feeding people”.

After Amelia was widowed in 1928, she lived with her unmarried daughter Emily until she died in 1930, aged 83. She was buried at Oamaru cemetery.

I am fortunate to have several photos of Amelia in an album left to me by my mother.

Panel materials: Patchwork fabric left over from a quilt I hand-made. I researched the types of fabric patterns that may have been available to women in the 1890s and tried to stay within that range.