Maker: Linda Wilson

Panel number: 280

Petition sheet number: 334

Person honouring: Maria Thirkell

Relationship to maker: Geographical

Maria Thirkell and her ship-builder husband were property owners in Wellington’s Mount Victoria and Oriental Bay.

Born Maria Muir in Sunderland, Durham, England in 1827, she married Edward Thirkell at the age of 20.

They had two daughters, Maria and Amelia, and probably a third, Jessie, born in England.

By 1858 the family had sailed to New Zealand and were settled in Wellington, where Maria had five more children: Louisa, Frederick, Kate, Ada, and George.

Maria’s husband was a successful ship repairer. He owned a yard and was well-known for his encyclopedic knowledge of anything to do with shipping. He died after a long illness at their Kent Terrace home in 1882.

Maria still lived there when she signed the petition and was enrolled to vote in 1893 and 1896.

When she died in 1905, aged 78, Maria was buried at Bolton St cemetery alongside her husband.

Maria was still a wealthy woman when she died, owning properties in Kent Terrace, Hawkestone Street, and Oriental Bay. She left her daughter Amelia a gold watch and chain, with the remainder of her estate being shared by her children and a granddaughter.

Panel materials: All from stock I already had. I used an old yellow pillowcase for the hand-stitched signatures and certification down the side because it looked like parchment. The corner of the tablecloth had been embroidered by my mother over 60 years ago. The blue and white stripe was a scrap from a teddy bear’s picnic tablecloth I made many years ago. The purple velvet material, the suffrage colour, was from scraps of costumes for a Circa Theatre performance in 2012 – I’d saved them to hopefully make a patchwork quilt. The buttons came from my button jar, and the gold braid from a Christmas parcel.