Maker: Jo Dixey

Panel number: 299

Petition sheet number: 353

Person honouring: Sarah Craig

Relationship to maker: None

Sarah Hood was born in Scotland in 1844.

In 1865 she married Andrew Craig, a cabinet maker, in Glasgow. Sarah worked as a cotton power-loom weaver before moving to New Zealand.

Sarah and Andrew travelled to Dunedin with their three children on the James Nicol Fleming in 1873. With them were Sarah’s sister Margaret, brother-in-law John Hopkins, and Andrew’s brother James. Sarah and Andrew had a further four children in New Zealand.

Andrew experienced short-lived bankruptcy in early 1877 and in July that year two of their sons, James (aged three) and Robert (aged nine months) died a day apart with scarlet fever/diphtheria.

Late in 1887 the family shifted to Melbourne, Victoria, for work, where baby Mildred died from dysentery just a few days after arrival. In 1888, a boy with spina bifida was born to Sarah and Andrew, surviving just a few days.

In January 1890 the family returned to New Zealand, moving to Invercargill where Andrew’s brother, James, ran a successful jewellery and watchmaking business.

Both Sarah and Andrew died in 1916 and were buried in the Northern Cemetery, Dunedin.

Panel materials: Old cotton sheeting and stranded cotton threads, all from my stash.