Maker: Cheryl Joy Olds Amys

Panel number: 245

Petition sheet number: 301

Person honouring: Annie Olds

Relationship to maker: Great-grandmother

Annie Osborne was a diarist who was born in September 1856 in Cornwall.

In June 1882, with her husband James Olds and three children, she sailed from Plymouth in England to Port Chalmers aboard the Ben Nevis.

She was a skilled and innovative seamstress who sewed and mended for the crew. “The cook saw me with my needle and gave me two towels with red list (sic) and fringe to make two caps for him. So I put the red stripes for a brim and the fringe for a tassel and it pleased him well, so he promised to mind us with little things for the children and also to bake bread for us all the way out!” 

He did bake fruit cakes, jam tart, and rice pudding to supplement their meagre diet. The 2nd mate was grateful for his mended trousers and supplied the family with filtered water as the ship’s water was nasty.

Annie kept a diary of this voyage that was so interesting it was later transcribed into a play and performed in London to celebrate the millennium. It was titled Flying Fish and the Cook’s Hat. 

Annie had nine more children and remained a devout Methodist. It was said she was ‘naturally of buoyant spirit’. She was living on Beach Road in Oamaru when she signed the suffrage petition. The family later moved to Christchurch.

Annie was a widow when she died in March 1929 in Christchurch, aged 73. She was buried at Sydenham cemetery, with James.

Panel materials: Old piece of creamy bedding material to which a photo of Annie was attached. Border material purchased – suffrage colours of green, white, and purple and a nice paua-like swirl.