Mrs. Ethel Hansard

Biography contributed by Jenny Robertston for the He Tohu exhibtion.

Ethel Frances Carter, the first of three daughters, was born in Napier in 1868. Her father was John Chilton Lambton Carter, retired Captain of HM’s 53rd Foot Regiment who had served in Bengal and the East Indies. On resigning he came to the Hawke’s Bay where he farmed sheep and for a time was the elected Superintendent of that province.  Ethel’s mother, Maria Theresa, nee McKain, was John’s second wife.  

Ethel was brought up and spent most of her life in Napier. In 1888, when she was 20, she married Roger Walter Hansard, descended from the family that gave its name to the printing of Parliamentary Debates, in the early years of the nineteenth century. Roger worked for Murray Roberts and Co managing its Port Ahuriri office.  Ethel and Roger raised three children in Napier: Guy, Doris and Amy.  In the years between the births of the two daughters, Ethel signed the women’s suffrage petition (Sheet 426) as did her house guest at the time, her sister-in-law Edith Hansard. In addition to her work as a mother, Ethel also spent considerable time over the years in voluntary work connected with St John’s Cathedral, Napier where Roger was a churchwarden and vestryman.

Later in life Ethel and Roger moved to Remuera where, six years after Roger, she died in 1951, at the age of 82.