Biography contributed by Clare Cramond
Mary Ann Nichols was born around 1839 and married Thomas Beckett in 1859. Thomas was an officer in the East India Company’s service before settling in New Zealand. They had five or six children over the next ten years. Thomas died in 1881, aged 61. A newspaper notice that year asks his creditors to contact Mary Ann. The following year Mary Ann married John Hayden.
Mary Ann Hayden signed the petition in 1893, along with three of her Beckett daughters-in-law. She was on the 1893 and 1896 electoral rolls, giving her occupation as 'baker'. In 1894 she was listed on the Parliamentary sheep returns as having 105 sheep. In 1894, the Hawkes Bay Herald reported the marriage of Louisa’s son Albert Beckett to Ellen Power, the granddaughter of Louisa McKain another signatory of the Petition. John Hayden died in 1898.
Mary Ann died in 1913 and a report in the Poverty Bay Herald read: 'Mrs Hayden, mother of Mrs CE Beckett, one of the oldest pioneer women of Wairoa died at Frasertown last week aged 75. She leaves four sons, one daughter and a number of grandchildren, and great grandchildren. She is the last but one of the 16 married women who took possession of Frasertown, then called Tekapu, in 1867, when the only signs of civilization were the survey lines and pegs'.
Mary Ann was buried in the Frasertown Cemetery.
Sources
Births Deaths and Marriages Online https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DTN18810822.2.17.1 Daily Telegraph, Issue 3166, 22 August 1881, Page 3
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HBH18940802.2.7 Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9748, 2 August 1894, Page 2
Sheep Returns https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/parliamentary/appendix-to-the-journals-of-the-house-of-representatives/1895/I/3312
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19131017.2.21 Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XL, Issue 13208, 17 October 1913, Page 3