Maker: Kate Riddick

Panel number: 502

Petition sheet number: Did not sign 1893 petition

People honouring: Lizzie Honour, Alexina Gordon, Mary Walker, Frances Pritchard

Relationship to maker: Four great-grandmothers - all alive at the time of the 1893 petition

Lizzie Honour was born in Wellington in 1881, one of seven. Educated at Clyde Quay and Wellington Girls College, she taught at primary schools in Wellington, the Kapiti Coast, and Manawatu. Lizzie married sheep farmer Harry Riddick in 1906 and moved to Matawai near Gisborne where her two children were born. She died of scarlet fever in 1912 and was buried in Karori Cemetery. 

Alexina Helen Gordon was born in Thames, Coromandel, in 1875, one of 10 children. Her father built Mrs. Gordon’s Boarding-house in Waitekauri, inland from Waikino, gold mined, and farmed, and also ran stagecoaches between Waitekauri and Paeroa. Alexina married Jackson Campbell and they had a close knit family of 11 children. She died in 1937. 

Mary Elizabeth Walker was born in 1889 in Blenheim, the youngest of five. She grew up on Hillersden, New Zealand’s largest sheep station at the time; her father worked with horses. She was a founder pupil at Marlborough High School, the only Walker child to get a secondary education. Two of her brothers were killed in WW1. In 1913 she married Roy Morland, architect and son of a sawmill owner. Mary had three children; the family spent most of their life crop farming around Pukekohe. She died in 1977. 

Frances Pritchard was born in New Zealand in 1870, marrying Arthur Clapham in 1896. Arthur travelled around the central North Island working as a hotel chef. The family lived in Palmerston North where they had six children; the oldest, Harold, died in 1916 in WW1. Frances died in 1942 and was buried in Palmerston North.

Panel materials: Wool (French knitting); different cotton material; embroidery thread; found items (metal shamrock).