Makers: Girl Guides of Belmont Unit, Lower Hutt

Panel number: 295

Petition sheet number: 348

Person honouring: Mary S. Powell

Relationship to makers: Unknown

Mary Sadler Powell was probably born in 1854 or 1855 in England. She emigrated to New Zealand to live with her brother in Invercargill in 1885 after the death of her parents.

Shortly after her arrival, Mary began a long association with the New Zealand Women’s Christiam Temperance Union (WCTU). She became president of the Invercargill branch in 1890 and under her leadership it grew to be the second-largest branch in the country.

Mary was heavily involved in the education of girls, the rational clothing movement, the temperance cause, and the suffrage campaign. She travelled around the country – by steamer, rail, coach, bicycle, and on foot – visiting existing branches, starting new ones, and encouraging members to subscribe to the White Ribbon, the WCTU’s magazine.

In 1905 she reported that during nine months, “I travelled 2,704 miles, paid nearly 1,000 visits in the interests of the cause, gave 91 addresses, organised six new branches, secured 224 new subscribers to the White Ribbon and about 210 new members for the Union.”

She later wrote about the suffrage cause saying, “We have been told we ‘got the Franchise too easily’. Little do those who make that statement know the miles we walked with that petition, and how women of all ages were interested.”

Mary didn’t marry. She was cared for by her niece in Dunedin after she retired from active WCTU work; she died there in 1946.