Maker: Margaret Robinson

Panel number: 333

Petition sheet number: 399

Person honouring: E. [Emma] Mackay

Relationship to maker: Great-great-aunt

Sheet 399 was signed in Waipu, Northland. I am related to 16 of the signatories, all descendants of the migrants who left Scotland for Nova Scotia in the 1830s. They built ships to come to New Zealand, arriving here in 1853. 

I chose my great-great-aunt Emma Mackay (whose signature on the petition looks more like an S). Emma was single all her life – one of the many women who kept house for their bachelor brothers. She worked for the New Zealand Bible Society, and her signature on her panel is taken from a Bible that she gave to a young Waipu man before he went overseas in 1914.

Panel materials: Her photograph is framed by a lace collar that belonged to my grandmother, and is backed by a piece of Nova Scotian tartan (which did not exist when she was alive, but I’m sure she’d appreciate it). The 46 stitches are on a piece of Mackay tartan, which I printed out, and 16 of the stitches are slightly larger to represent my direct relatives. I backed the panel with a piece of Macleod tartan left over from the kilt my mother made me in 1953 when Dame Flora Macleod visited New Zealand.