Anne Jackson

Anne is standing second from left. Her sister Jane Levy is seated left, then her half-sister’s Leah (married Thos W McKenzie) and Louisa (married Frank Snelson) on the right hand half of this photo. Anne is one of the many women who signed the 1892 women's suffrage petition, but appears not to have signed the better-known 1893 suffrage petition.

Biography contributed by Rachel Baskerville (great-great granddaughter-of Anne's sister Jane Levy)

Anne’s mother was Elizabeth Cooze, born 28 January 1802 in Somerset, England. Her father Aaron Harvey had been married to Elizabeth Cooze on 15th Oct 1820. When Anne was born in 1831 she already had four older brothers and sisters; but then Aaron died suddenly of cholera (9 September 1832), and the family story was told that Elizabeth would have been thrown out of the miner’s cottage and have nowhere to live with five young children; her youngest, Anne was only 14 months old. However, a friend of Anne’s father Henry Buck, (also a miner in Somerset), married Elizabeth on 6th October 1833. His later business as a 'Blacksmith and Whitesmith' when they settled in Molesworth Street, Wellington, reflected a miner’s interest in smelting and iron making, integral to blacksmithing. They had three more children together in Somerset before emigrating to New Zealand with the young sisters Jane (aged 14) and Anne Harvey (aged 11) on one of the very early settler migration boats, the Birman, arriving in Petone in 1842. Their younger children, little Levi Buck (aged 6), Leah Buck (aged 7) and Eli Buck (aged 9) also travelled with them. Anne’s older sister Jane was travelling as a 'servant' to receive a subsidised passage. On 13 October 1841 The Birman had sailed under Capt. Clelland from Gravesend, London, arriving at Port Nicholson via the Cape of Good Hope on 1 March 1842 with 243 settlers (her obituary was erroneous in stating she emigrated on the Duke of Roxburgh).

When Henry and Elizabeth arrived the family of seven settled in Molesworth Street, in Thorndon, Wellington. Their only New Zealand-born child, Louisa Buck was born 29 January 1844 in Wellington. As Anne was now 14 and the oldest child in the household she no doubt had to assist her mother with the younger children and household duties. Louisa was the last of Elizabeth’s nine children (see entry on Suffrage petition website for Louisa Snelson). In the 1844 NZ Gazette and Wellington Spectator Jury lists, Henry was listed as a 'Smith' living in Molesworth Street, Wellington. The colony occupations were both black and white smiths, and there are various advertisements Henry lodged in Newspapers as both a black and white smith. So Anne grew up in a busy household with younger children. Later in 1942, the Thistle Inn was opened and the suburb (and city’s) first school (Miss Tilke’s) opened in 1842 when Anne was 11.

She was 19 when she married Mr Thomas Wilson (1831–1860) of Sydney; in St Paul’s church on 20 November 1850. [The St Paul’s church in Thorndon was not what we now think of as 'Old St Pauls', as that building was not consecrated until 1866.] The couple lived in Lower Hutt for some years. In Anne Jackson‘s obituary on 15 May 1909 it was noted that 'the suburb was not the garden which it is now. Settlers in those uncompromising times had struggles with their crops, the river, and the Maoris. An armed patrol was continually on the roads around the village in the more serious stages of the Land wars'.

In 1855 a huge earthquake struck Wellington after the 1848 earthquake, destroying many buildings in Thorndon and elsewhere and killing one person. Anne was 24 at the time of this second earthquake, a very memorable event for these settlers. Flooding of the Hutt River also caused no little hardship to the pioneers, many of whom suffered great loss. Mrs H. Morris, daughter of Mrs Leah McKenzie and Anne’s niece, was caught with Anne in one of the floods, and it was related in Anne’s obituary how the two women were imprisoned in the upper story of the dwelling for a whole fortnight before the flood abated. Mr Wilson died in 1860 without their having children, and she then met a widower, Mr Edwin Jackson; whom she married in 1863.

As described on the Hutt City Library history website, Edwin Jackson was a Petone settler, founder, entrepreneur and bricklayer, who gave Petone’s main street its name of Jackson Street. Born in England about 1826, he had married Harriett, his first wife, in England in 1848. Their daughter Mary Anne was born in 1849, a son Joseph Enoch was born in Chorlton, Lancashire in 1852, and two other children who did not survive. They arrived in Wellington on the Indian Queen on January 30, 1857, when the focus of settlement was now on Wellington. However, Edwin Jackson and family moved from Wellington to the Hutt, where he bought 100 acres of land, part of Petone Township. He set up his brick works business here about 1859.

Harriett and Edwin were founders of the Wesleyan (Methodist) Church, and he gifted sections to the Church. However, Harriett died in 1858. He had two young children, and married Anne Wilson (née Harvey). Together they continued to invest time and energy into the development of Petone. They gifted land for the Petone Naval drill and boat sheds, and to the Loyal Petone Lodge of Oddfellows. Edwin was a long-time Town Commissioner of Petone, on the Town Board and Borough Council in the 1880s and 1890s. Edwin Jackson cut up some of his land into sections for sale, and with an eye for business in 1892 he built the Petone salt and artesian water swimming baths as the Gear Meat Works was discharging blood and offal into the sea, making it unfit for swimming and attracting sharks.

Edwin Jackson died on April 29, 1896 in his home at Nelson Street, Petone, aged 70 and was buried in the (now) Bolton Street Cemetery alongside his first wife Harriett. After Edwin Jackson died, Anne continued to live at their residence at 27 Nelson Street, Petone. Anne’s obituary described her as 'the mother of Petone…being of a cheerful disposition and was greatly beloved in the district'. She was a prominent member of the Wesleyan Church, and in different periods was President of the Petone Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and of the Wesleyan Ladies Sewing Guild. Two of her step-children by Edwin‘s first marriage survived her. Her obituary in 1909 noted that her younger brothers Eli and Levi, who came out on the Birman with her in 1842, had pre-deceased her. She was buried in the Anglican cemetery in Lower Hutt.