Biographical information provided by Catherine Amey, National Library of New Zealand, for the He Tohu exhibition:
Hannah Martha Louisa Gerken was born in East London in 1863, the second child of Johann Gerken, a sugar baker originally from Bruttendorf, Hannover. The Gerkens emigrated to New Zealand in 1866, sailing from London to Lyttleton on the Blue Jacket.
Like so many women of her time, Hannah is barely visible within the landscape of the lives of her male relatives. She lived with her parents and siblings at Pleasant Point in South Canterbury for eleven years, after which Johann bought a farm in Chatton, Southland, and the family moved to their new home.
Hannah married John Maude on 30 June 1884, a sheep farmer who was ten years her senior. The wedding was at the Gerkens’ farm, and a Reverend Hobbs officiated. Her first child, Alice May, died in infancy in 1886, but she went on to have two more daughters and four sons. John died in 1929 at the age of 76, but Hannah, who was ‘highly esteemed’ in Gore, lived as a widow for nearly two more decades, dying on May 8, 1947 at the age of 84.