Maker: Barbara Sullivan

Panel number: 248

Petition sheet number: 304

People honouring: Kate D’Ath, and Eva Hurley, and Kate Bennett

Relationship to maker: Great-great-grandmother; great-great-great-aunt; great-grandmother

Kate D'Ath and Eva Hurley were sisters, and daughters of Catherine and Henry Lynch who farmed on the Kapiti coast.

Kate Lynch was born around 1844 in Bolton, England. Her family came to New Zealand via Australia in 1846, on the Java.

Kate married Joseph Death in March 1866. (The family name later changed to D'Ath.) Joseph first farmed at Waiwhetu, in Hutt Valley, where three of their seven children were born. They later moved to Ōtaki.

In D'Ath Families in New Zealand, Helen Coker mentions that Kate was a frugal housekeeper. Kate and Joseph “were a hospitable couple and the house was often filled with people – passing through [Ōtaki]”. They also had a beautiful garden. Kate died in Ōtaki in 1912 and was buried in the Catholic cemetery. 

Eva Lynch was born in Lower Hutt in 1857. At age 24, she married Jeremiah Hurley at Paekakariki. They had six children. Eva lived in Manukau when she signed the petition. She died in Wellington in 1920. 

Kate Bennett was Kate and Joseph D’Ath’s second child, and born in 1869. When she signed the petition Kate was a young mother of three. She had attended school in Ōtaki, then St Mary’s College in Wellington. Judging from the writing box she was awarded for ‘Good Conduct’ at Ōtaki School, the book she won for ‘Arithmetic’ at St Mary’s, and the framed pencil works still with family members, she was an able and diligent student. 

At 18 Kate married Francis Bennett at her family home in Ōtaki. Francis was a surveyor, and the oldest son of the first lighthouse keepers at Pencarrow Head, Wellington. Kate and Francis brought up their children in a house that is still standing, in Waerenga Road, Ōtaki. They had nine children; three fought in World War 1. 

The name of Kate’s son Joseph, who died on the battlefield at Passchendaele, is on the commemorative cross at Pukekaraka. Kate was widowed in 1927 and died in 1958 at 89. She was buried with Francis at Ōtaki’s Catholic cemetery. She is very fondly remembered – a kind and loving grandmother and great-grandmother.

Panel materials: White cotton, printed Liberty lawn. I already had the fabrics.