Maker: Sue-Ellen Sandilands

Panel number: 258

Petition sheet number: 315

Person honouring: Amelia Green

Relationship to maker: Unknown

Amelia Ann Foreman Willett was born in April 1842 at Strand, Middlesex, London, the daughter of a tailor and a needlewoman. 

Amelia went into service in London at 16 and was chosen as a women’s companion to travel to Australia. Declining the return voyage to England she left Melbourne and boarded the Pirate, bound for Otago. From there she made her way to Akaroa on Banks Peninsula. It was here that she met William Thomas Green. Amelia and William married in 1862. 

William had a small farm in German Bay and worked as a labourer. In 1882 they moved to Christchurch, then Wellington, eventually purchasing 50 acres of bush in Eltham, Taranaki that they cleared to establish a dairy farm. 

Amelia and William had 14 children, including two sets of twins. Six of the children died before they reached one year of age, one died aged 10, the remaining seven lived to adulthood.

In 1889 the family moved to Palmerston North and it was from their Church Street home that Amelia signed the petition, aged 51.

Unlike most married women, whose role was given as ‘wife’ or ‘domestic duties’, Amelia’s occupation was listed as ‘dressmaker’ on the 1893 and 1896 electoral rolls.

William died suddenly in July 1908, aged 71, after a night out with Amelia visiting friends; Amelia died in October 1919, aged 77. They were buried together at Terrace End cemetery, Palmerston North. Their headstone reads ‘They miss you most who loved you best’.

Panel materials: Unknown