Ellen Stancliffe

Biographical information provided by Susanna Joe for the He Tohu exhibition:

Ellen Margaret Wilkinson was born around 1836 in England. In 1852 she married John Hartley Caygill Stancliffe in Lancashire and two children, Mary Ann (1853) and John (1859-1938), were born before the family emigrated to New Zealand in 1860. Living in Auckland and Coromandel, the family expanded with five more children: Helena (1863-1952), Albert (1865), Thomas (1868-1952), Arabella (1870) and Hartley (1872-1896). After John’s early death in 1872 from injuries received in a Coromandel saw-mill accident, Ellen remarried two years later to Richard Measures. Ellen was admitted as a patient to the Auckland Lunatic Asylum in 1909 and died there two years later on 11 July 1911, aged 76. She is buried in Auckland’s Waikumete Cemetery, in the same plot as her youngest son Hartley.