Maker: Clare Bristow

Panel number: 344

Petition sheet number: 412

Person honouring: A. [Anna] Leighton

Relationship to maker: None

Anna Mason was baptised in Radford, Nottinghamshire in 1828, the daughter of Ruth Brittle and her husband John Mason.

In April 1852 she married John Leighton. Their first child, Evangaline, was born the following year but she died in 1858.

On 6 October 1858 Anna and John sailed to New Zealand on the Kinnaird with their two surviving children, Elizabeth (4) and Ruth (2). They arrived in Wellington in February 1859 and remained in the city for the rest of their lives.

Anna and John had five more children between 1860 and 1867: Thomas, Catherine, William, Emma, and Lucy. The family lived in a cottage on Wesleyan Reserve land in Tinakori Rd, Wellington.

In 1871, Anna had to raise the children alone when her husband John died, aged 44. Their youngest child (Lucy) was only four years old. Anna was a dressmaker/seamstress, and stories tell of how she was invited to attend balls and functions to make repairs to women’s dresses that were damaged when travelling to the event or during dancing.

In 1916, Anna was living with Lucy – a school teacher who never married – when she died in September, aged 87. She was buried with her husband and daughter Katie at Bolton Street Cemetery.

John Leighton wrote a diary of the voyage to New Zealand; great-great-granddaughter Melva Wood has written a booklet about Anna and John Leighton [available at the National Library, Wellington.]

Panel materials: Silk, cotton, and wool fabrics – chosen because they reflected the patterns and colours of the period in which Anna lived.