Maker: Patricia Ashcroft

Panel number: 437

Petition sheet number: 532

Person honouring: Eliza Wallis

Relationship to maker: Great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother, great great-great-grandmother

Eliza Hart was born in Wellington in 1846. She was the fifth child of Sarah and Edward Hart who arrived in Wellington on the Tyne on 9 August 1841. 

She married John Wallis on 13 January 1863. They had 12 children, the first born in in 1863 and the last in 1891. John and Eliza shifted to Christchurch in about 1873. 

Eliza was a friend of Kate Sheppard and was a founding member of the National Council of Woman in 1896. Her granddaughter Esther (illegitimate daughter of Emily) was adopted at 10 by the notorious Minnie Dean. 

Eliza died in 1914.

The photograph on the panel reminds me very much of my father Malcolm Rickard, son of her sixth child Gertrude May.

Panel materials: Unbleached calico I’d dyed.