Maker: Megan Brasell-Jones

Panel number: 386

Petition sheet number: 468

Person honouring: Bertha Ward

Relationship to maker: None

Bertha and her sisters, Ethel Mary and Marion Isabel, all signed the petition – their signatures are on the same page, sheet 468.

Bertha Mabel Ward was born in 1867, daughter of Eleanor Wakefield and Robert Ward from a missionary family in Taranaki. Robert was a judge of the Native Land Court.

In 1895, two years after she signed the petition, Bertha married Arthur Holmes. Her husband was a bank clerk and they lived in Victoria Avenue, Whanganui where their only child, Robert Ledger Holmes, was born in 1897. About 1906, they moved to Palmerston North where Arthur was the manager for Messrs Abraham and Williams.

Around 1916, they left for Whangarei, where Arthur was the manager for the North Auckland Farmers Co-operative Association.

Bertha died in 1918 in Auckland, aged 51 years, after a long illness.

Panel materials: The top half of the panel was made from a piece of vintage cotton floral fabric found in the Milton Hospice Shop – on the way to the Wanaka embroidery school. The bottom half is from a piece of wool-blend fabric left over from another project. The cotton backing (table cloth) was bought from the Orphan Aid shop in North Dunedin for 50c. All threads are from my own collection – those I’ve bought in the past for various projects, or found in opportunity shops around New Zealand. The only material purchased (apart from the tablecloth) was some Heat n Bond to adhere layers.