Rachel Elizabeth HART was born on 7 July 1860 in Plymouth, England, daughter of Jewish shopkeepers Nathaniel HART and Dinah NATHAN (see D. HANSEN sheet 259).
In January 1865 Rachel, arrived in Lyttelton, Canterbury on the Zealandia with her family. They lived in Christchurch a short time before Rachel moved with her mother and siblings to Greymouth on the West Coast where she grew up.
In June 1882 when she was 21 Rachel travelled to Tasmania to marry her fiancé, James Lawn, aged 45, a Cornish goldminer. Her first child was born in Tasmania before the family returned to Greymouth, where they built two houses that still remain at 47 High Street. The family later moved to Merryjigs, above Reefton, where James was a mine manager in 1888, and later to Blacks Point, near Reefton.
Rachel, born Jewish and baptised at 15, was active in the Methodist Church and she was also involved in the WCTU. She attended the 21st National WCTU Convention in Greymouth in 1906 as ‘Superintendent’ for Reefton and was photographed standing alongside Kate Sheppard.
The Lawn family grew to nine surviving children. Twins Charlie and John, Benjamin and James all served in WWI. Benjamin, aged just 19 when he signed up, was killed in the Somme in September 1916. Rachel was deeply affected, as were all the family. She died the following year on 23 August 1917 aged just 57. She had suffered a stroke whilst travelling on the overnight ferry from Wellington to Lyttelton after visiting her eldest son in the North Island. Her family believed she died from a broken heart. She is buried in Lyttelton Cemetery. Her headstone, which also commemorates her son Benjamin, was destroyed in the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes.
Her life and that of her connected family is recorded in the book To Live a Long and Prosperous Life (2016) ISBN 978-0-473-34255-5 by descendant C. McCaughan, further updates at https://inkandstoneblog.wordpress.com
Cynthia L.I. McCaughan, 2018
Sources
- https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/documents/suffrage-pdfs/251.pdf the page with Rachel’s signature at the top is partly pasted on the previous which obscures her second initial incorrectly transcribed as a ‘C’
- Grey River Argus, 21 March 1906, photograph; Auckland Weekly News; Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries AWNS-19060412-10-7
- https://inkandstoneblog.wordpress.com/category/rachel-hart/
Image
Photograph (cropped) of Rachel E. Lawn, c. 1902 (courtesy Owen Lawn)
Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.
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