Makers: Natash and Megan Coleman

Panel number: 379

Petition sheet number: 458

Person honouring: Miss Eva E. Peacock

Relationship to makers: None

Although Eva was allocated to me, after talking through the bio with my mother I found my great-grandmother also lived near Meanee. She would have walked the same streets as Eva did – a nice symmetry.

Eva Elizabeth Peacock probably appreciated the benefits that household appliances brought women as she made a specific bequest of her electric vacuum cleaner to a female relative.  

Eva Elizabeth Peacock was born in 1867 in Meanee [near Napier] to Margaret Helen Sangster Morison and James Peacock, a sheep farmer. Eva’s mother Margaret and sister Isa signed the same petition sheet as Eva.

Eva was apparently a diligent student – in December 1881 she won Mr Brandon’s prize (a gold sovereign for ‘the best progress’) and the Standard IV First Prize at Meanee school.

The 1893 Electoral Roll lists her as a music teacher living in Meanee with her parents. Subsequent rolls only list her as 'spinster’ but have her living at Lighthouse Road, Napier in 1911, and St Joseph Street, Waipukurau in 1925. 

Eva died in August 1952 at Waipukurau, aged 85, two days before her sister Isa. Eva never married. Included in her will is a special bequest of her Hoover electric vacuum cleaner to the wife of her nephew Rex Witherow.

Panel materials: My grandmother’s thread from her sewing box, my mother’s stash of collected fabrics, and my box of beading materials.