Maker: Heather Mackie

Panel number: 42

Petition Sheet Number: 33 

Person honouring: Sophia Green 

Relationship to makers: Maternal great-grandmother

Sophia Fothergill married Henry Green in Oberston, Gloucestershire in 1879.
They had 4 days of honeymoon and at just 20 years old she left behind all of her family and friends to move to a far away land. Sophia and Henry Green boarded a boat at Brunswick Pier and sailed to New Zealand, landing in Port Chalmers.

Sophia had come from a sheltered family home and was educated at a private school. She was the youngest of six children, Her three brothers helped their father in his wine making business while the three girls helped their mother in the home. She would go on to have a further four girls. 

Henry Green was a seaman and after arriving in Dunedin and settling Sophia into one room, he returned to sea for a few more years. As they started their family Henry got a shore job and after their third child was born they moved to a farm on Mt Cargill where they made their permanent home. The land was harsh, with little flat land usable for cropping.  The bulk of it was manuka scrub.  They ran a few chickens and cows but there was little money in cattle in those times. Being a seaman Henry knew little of farming and that never changed, He worked a full-time job down the hill in Sawyers Bay to support the family, and Sophias life was a hard one running the farm and the home.

The original family home was destroyed by fire sometime after the family had grown up and moved away.

After Henry died in 1916 Sophia moved to Dunedin to live with her son Leonard, and later when he married she moved in with her daughter Daisy. Sophia spent a lot of time during these years visiting all of her family scattered around Dunedin until Sophia was killed by a truck while she was crossing a city street one dark wet June evening in 1933 after visiting her daughter Lily who was in hospital having just given birth to my mother Margaret.

Sophia dreamed often off her family back home and returning for a visit but sadly she never did.

Panel materials:  Panel loosely based on a painting of the Green family home on Mt Cargill done in 1904 by Emily Brooke. My grandmother (Lily) recalled the painter staying with the family while she completed this. I’ve created this panel with textile items I already had, some new and some re-used. Panel backed with a piece of fabric my Grandmother Sophias daughter Lily had patch worked by hand probably during the First World War, and later she made into a dressing gown for herself.  I recall her wearing that dressing gown for many years.

The painting: The family home with a field of cabbages in front. In the field are two of Sophia’s daughters Lily and Daisy gathering frosty food to feed the cows before going to school.  My Grandmother Lily recalls how their fingers used to freeze in the winter and for that reason she disliked the painting because of what it reminded her of - a very tough existence.