Maker: Susan Patrick

Panel number: 432

Petition sheet number: 524

People honouring: Mary Ann Brightwell, Maria Jane Dixon, Blanche Burgess

Relationship to maker: Aunties with ‘greats’

I am proud to be the descendant of Mary Ann Brightwell and Maria Jane Dixon, and Blanche Burgess was my great-aunt. Her younger sister [my grandmother], Clarice Jane Dixon whose embroidery features in my panel used to talk about her sister Blanche but I never met her.

Mary Ann Knight was born in Cornwall, England about 1828. She came to New Zealand with her parents, William and Mary Ann Knight, aboard the Duke of Roxburgh, arriving at Petone in February 1840. 

She married Thomas Brightwell in 1843. They had eight children. They lived in the Hutt Valley, Wairarapa, and in Taranaki. Mary Ann died in 1904.

Her daughter, Maria Jane Brightwell was born in 1847. She married Sam Dixon in Masterton, Wairarapa on 25 June 1864. They had eight children. Mary Ann learned millinery and dressmaking and she used these skills to supplement the family income. The family moved to Patea and then to Hawera in 1880. She was a very active member of the Hawera Choral Society and the Methodist choir. She died in 1917.

Blanche Dixon was born in 1870. She married George Burgess, a carpenter, in 1892. They had eight children. They shifted first to Stratford and later to New Plymouth where she died in 1959.

Panel materials: Two embroideries stitched by my grandmother, Clarice Jane Dixon, as the basis for my panel.