Maker: Sherril Jennings

Panel number: 84

Petition Sheet Number: 86

Person honouring: Jessie Pollock

Relationship to makers: None

Jessie Pollock married twice. One was a brief marriage in 1886, to Henry Crawley, against her mother’s wishes. The ceremony made the local paper; the bride wept throughout, then having said ‘I do’, she dashed to the graveyard accompanied by her puzzled spouse to spend the next few hours discussing matters - then she went back to her mother! 

Later, when aged 33, Jessie married Bob Garrett who she met while riding near Mosgiel. She’d ducked her head to go under a tree branch and lost her bonnet, to Bob’s amusement. Jessie gave him her opinion of people who laugh at others’ misfortune. Bob picked up her hat - she married him! 

Jessie was born in 1863, the youngest of the Pollock family. She attended Otepopo school, near Herbert, but when her farmer father died in 1880, the family returned to Mosgiel. Jessie and her mother both signed the petition here. Jessie had strong opinions about temperance and suffrage. She reared her family strictly: no alcohol in her house, although smoking was permitted. As Jessie and Bob’s four children were growing up Jessie had noticed a small bundle beside the local milkman on his cart - a little girl. She found he was caring for the little one because his wife was sickly. ‘That’s no good’ Jessie said. ‘Give her to me!’ Eileen Lynes became Eileen Garrett, and completed their family. The two portraits, originals held by the Early settlers Museum in Dunedin, show Robert Garrett, and Jessie Pollock Garrett aged 22. Jessie died in 1950.

Panel materials: Mainly recycled from silk book and lace sample that have been gifted to me. The tatting in my mother’ stash had a DIC price tag of 2/6d. Old blankets and my mother’s embroidery thread. I try to have a little bit of her in every art piece I create.