Andrewina signed the petition as Andrina Riddell, Sandymount. She was aged 22 years of age at the time and living at the family home of Ivybank at Sandymount.
She was born on 31 August 1871 at Ivybank, Otago, the seventh child and fourth daughter of Wilhelmina Brown nee Glendinning and Walter Riddell who emigrated to New Zealand from from Eskdalemuir, Dumfries, Scotland in 1862 on the immigrant ship Grassmere.
The Riddells were staunch Presbyterians, their strong Christian faith sustaining them in the face of the many challenges and hardships they faced as early settlers.
The family worshipped at Pukehiki Presbyterian church at Highcliff, designed and built by Walter Riddell in 1867/68 and later upgraded by him in 1881.
Education was highly valued by the family with Walter responding to the Otago Education Board’s offer to provide a teacher if the community provided a schoolhouse. He petitioned his local community to support a school, arranged for a school committee to be elected and in March 1871 set about fitting up his first home for a schoolhouse. A teacher was appointed and arrived to start the school on 11 March 1871, the first at Sandymount.
The Riddell children regularly featured in the annual school prizegiving lists.
In the report of the end-of-year prizegiving at Sandymount School the Otago Witness of 27 December 1879 noted that Andrewina had received first prize for reading and recitation and a second in mental arithmetic in her standard IV (year 6) class.
Then in the Otago Witness of 10 January 1885 when in her standard VI (year 8) class she was named as one of four students who received awards for diligence in their lessons and regular attendance along with three others, her two brothers William and John and her sister Wilhelmina. She also received a prize for sewing and drawing.
On 5 July 1901 Andrewina married James Taylor in Dunedin. They farmed at Otakou, on the Otago Peninsula, at Sandymount, and Stirling. After James death Andrewina lived for a short time in Hawea Flat before moving to Dunedin to live with her sister Helen (Nell) Mahoney at 205 York Place Dunedin.
Andrewina and James had one son, James (Jim) Davis Taylor.
James Taylor died on 26 September 1931 in Balclutha, and Andrewina on 6 September 1962 at 205 York Place, Dunedin. She was cremated on 8 December 1952 and her ashes are interred in Balclutha Cemetery, South Otago.
Andrewina (Andrina) Taylor (nee Riddell). Family photo
Biography submitted by Pamela Jane Fuller, granddaughter of Janet Jane Henderson (nee Riddell)