Maker: Shirley Pygott

Panel number: 401

Petition sheet number: 491

Person honouring: M. A. Payton

Relationship to maker: None

Mary Ann Macara was born in 1845 in Monzie, Perthshire, Scotland. She was 20 when she arrived in Auckland in 1865 with her parents Mary and William Macara and siblings. 

The family first went to Wellington and then Greytown. In 1876, she married Joseph Payton (1843–1910) in Greytown before they moved to Masterton, where she lived for 40 years.

Joseph was the owner and founder of the Wairarapa Times Age newspaper. He and Mary had two sons and three daughters. Mary was 74 when she died in 1924, at Victoria St in Masterton.

Panel materials: Vintage linen, collaged and painted, with vintage lace and dressmaking tissue printed with Mary’s bio information and excerpts from her husband’s newspaper – published in the months before the petition went to parliament. Over-stamped with vintage style stamps and embellished with a camellia fashioned from recycled flower bouquet wrapping.