Maker: Vivienne Lowe

Panel number: 253

Petition sheet number: 311

Person honouring: Mary Jane Low

Relationship to maker: Paternal second great-grandmother

Mary Jane Low, a diminutive and blind woman, absolutely terrified my cousin when he was a small boy and meeting her in the mid-1940s. I like to believe that she was a fierce, strong, and independent woman who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believed in and understood the power of a woman’s right to take responsibility for her own destiny. 

At the age of six, Mary Jane Piercy, her parents and two young siblings left their home in Wallingford, Berkshire and sailed to New Zealand aboard the Mary Shepherd. The journey took 112 days, arriving in Auckland in February 1866.

The family settled in Christchurch, where Mary Jane met a young Scotsman named John Low. She married him at the Church of St Andrew in June 1882.

John had arrived in Lyttelton from Forfarshire, Scotland on the Queen of the Mersey in October 1862, aged seven, along with his parents, brother and sister. 

The newlyweds eventually relocated to the Manawatu area where John made his living as a wheelwright / mechanic. They had 10 children between 1883 and 1904. Two children died at very young ages, five married, and three sisters remained spinsters – all lived with Mary Jane and John at the family home at 80 Bourke Street. 

Mary Jane died aged 89 in 1948. She was buried in a family grave in Palmerston North’s Terrace End cemetery, along with John (died 1931), six of their 10 children, and her younger sister Edith Annis Piercy.

Panel materials: 100% cotton pillowslip purchased for $1 from my local op shop, Belfast linen, 100% cotton map print, silk embroidery thread, cotton perle and dmc stranded cotton. Photograph printed on silk and reinforced with calico. Wool wadding to provide depth to the appliqued photo. The cream and blue lace were from my stash of ‘one day I might do something with this’ and the silk ribbons were purchased for this project.