Maker: Wendy Bruhns

Panel number: 252

Petition sheet number: 310

Person honouring: E. Belk

Relationship to maker: None

Emma Belk (born Dutton) was one of the working-class signatories to the 1893 women’s suffrage petition. Aged 73 at the time, and a widow, she was living on Main Street, Palmerston North.

Emma and her husband James Duncan Belk were among the first group of settlers in Feilding. They were the senior members of a three-generation family of 16 who migrated and arrived in Feilding in 1874.

Feilding was then a swampy, mosquito-ridden clearing in the bush, with no accommodation for the settler party, which included babies. The story is that the seven men in the advance party were so appalled by the site that they demanded to be taken back to Palmerston North, but the driver of the bullock team which brought them took off on his horse, leaving them stranded.

The family eventually moved to Palmerston North, probably in the early 1880s, and this is where James died in 1889.

Emma was listed as a ‘grocer’ in the 1893 Wise’s Directory, as she helped run her son Matthew’s small grocery shop in Main Street Palmerston North.

Life would not have been easy for her. Photos show a grim countenance, which is understandable – she had given birth to 14 children, lost at least five of them, and had a hard life in New Zealand.

Emma died in 1901, aged 80, and was buried at Terrace End cemetery.

Panel materials: Scraps of materials in my craft supplies – only purchased some webbing and thread.