Maker: Clare Cramond

Panel number: 249

Petition sheet number: 305

Person honouring: Annie Hall

Relationship to maker: Great-grandmother

Annie Piper was born in Kent, England around 1860. She migrated to New Zealand with her parents, John and Charlotte Piper, and six brothers and sisters. They arrived in Napier on the Hudson in October 1875. John was a cropping farmer and began hop-growing in the Wairoa area. 

In 1881, at Clyde, Wairoa, Annie married George Hall, a farmer around 16 years her senior. Her occupation was domestic servant. They had nine children: Thomas Henry, George Ernest, Georgina Mabel, Frances Elizabeth, Caroline Hellen, Florence Ethel, Charles Edward, Victoria Alexanderina, and Dorothy Mary.

Their third son (Charles) was born in July 1893, the same month the main Women’s Suffrage Petition was submitted to Parliament. Annie was on the 1893 and 1896 electoral rolls. The family lived in Frasertown (Wairoa), then Dannevirke and Palmerston North before returning to Hawke’s Bay in 1908 – this time to Napier. George died in 1918 and was buried at Napier.

Annie died in February 1926 and was buried at Hillsborough cemetery, Auckland.

Panel materials: All fabrics are recycled – white damask scrap and a blue silk scrap, part of an old embroidered tray cloth, pieces of old woollen blanket and sacking that my mother gave me, cut-up old garments for the suffrage green and purple, wool my grandmother gave me years ago, and cottons from my sewing basket.