Biographical information provided by Stefanie Lash for the He Tohu exhibition:
Rhoda Jane Hawkins was born in 1857 to Nathaniel and Rhoda Hawkins in Shelton, an area of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. Both of her parents died before she was four, and after some time living with her grandparents, she and her sister Mary-Ann were brought up at the Muller homes orphanage at Ashley Down near Bristol. She emigrated to New Zealand in 1877, aged 19, as a nurse and general domestic servant. In 1879, she married Lachlan McQueen, a carpenter. They settled in Invercargill. Of their eight children, three died as babies. Rhoda was survived by only two of her children.
Lachlan McQueen died in 1911, and Rhoda remarried the next year to William Lawson and moved to Timaru. She died in 1934, aged 77.