Notes provided by Helen Edwards, who has carried out extensive research on the women who signed Sheet 156. Download pdf of this research here.
Ann Wilhelmina Richards (née Bannerman) was known to her family as Minna and was the third child of Jane Burns and Reverend William Bannerman. Her father was one of the first three ministers of the Otago Presbyterian Church. She was the granddaughter of Dunedin founders, the Reverend Thomas Burns and his wife Clementina Grant. Ann’s sister, Agnes Gray Bannerman also signed the Petition on Sheet 156.
Ann was born on 16 September 1860, at the Puerua Manse, in Clutha. She married Spencer Richards in 1888 and was living in Hart Street, Roslyn, Dunedin when she signed the petition. The house, number 29, which still stands, was built in 1876 by George Armstrong, whose wife Janet Armstrong and daughter Jessie McDougall also signed the Petition.
Ann and Spencer lived here with their four children until about 1912, then moved to South Otago, where they became farmers and orchardists.
Additional biography information contributed by Katherine Blakeley.
Spencer Richards died at their home in Pukeawa, near the Clutha River, in 1932 and Ann died on 17 January 1950.
They are buried together in the Balclutha Cemetery.
Related images:
The house Ann Richards was living in when she signed the suffrage petition.