By Roselyn Fauth
Here's a screenshot from the passenger list of the Indiana, 1858, showing 13-year-old Mary Ann Gardner and her family, recently arrived from Surrey. Notice how she and her sister Sarah were recorded as "transferred to single women." It's a little detail, but it opens up larger questions about her path into domestic service. The SS Indiana was a steel barquentine of 852 tons, captained by James McKirdy, which made many trips over 30 years until 1894, when it hit uncharted rocks in the Furneaux Group of Islands off Tasmania. Look closely at the passenger list, and see what details you can spy... beautifully hand writing hey. The passenger list is where she is first named, yet already separated as a single woman instead of a child. christchurchcitylibraries.com/Indiana-1858.pdf
A few days ago, I was chatting with my friend Sarah Best about a name I’d spotted on a ship register. I’d been wondering for ages about Mary Ann Gardner—the teenager who worked as a governess for Sam Williams in Timaru around 1860. After his first wife Ann died, Mary Ann married Sam and had his third child. I’d been so focused on learning about Ann Williams, the mother of the first recorded European baby born in Timaru, that I hadn’t paid much attention to Mary Ann. But stumbling across some immigration records sparked my interest. Who was she? Did she travel here with her family or on her own? What was her life like, and how did it unfold?
After I posted a snippet of the shipping record and asked some questions, Sarah responded with some great insights. Teamed with her help, the meticulous family research of Nola Towgood, and information from the New Zealand Suffrage website, we pieced together more of Mary Ann’s story. Like many colonial women, we’re still left with questions, and I’ve learned just how easy it is to make assumptions, or get things wrong, when details are missing. In this blog, I trace her journey as a teenager navigating colonial life... governess, stepmother, mother, partner, and survivor, and reflect on what’s recorded, what’s left out, and how we listen for the voices missing in the archives.
If you love unravelling the layers of women’s history, or just a good old-fashioned history hunt, this story is for you...
So here we go... grab a coffee and lets learn about the Gardner Family: From Surrey to Canterbury
Mary Ann Gardner arrived in New Zealand with her family from Surrey aboard the Indiana. The ship left England on 2 August 1858 and arrived in Lyttelton on 23 November 1858. The passenger list shows:
- Henry Gardner, 39, a baker
- Caroline Gardner, 38
- Sarah Gardner, 15
- Mary Ann Gardner, 13
- Henry Gardner, 11
- Note Elizabeth Caroline Gardner was born in 1859 in Christchurch, New Zealand
Curiously, both Sarah and Mary Ann were listed as "transferred to single women." I wonder why Mary Ann, at just 13, was moved out of the family group? Was it to do with cabin arrangements? Or was she already being classified as employable, expected to enter domestic service soon after landing? I don't know why this was recorded, but it is interesting to note her recorded height was, 4 foot, 2 and 6/7 inches... one of those small details that helps me imagine her at the time on the ship and put her into context with myself... by the time I was 13, I was 6 foot.
I also wondered if this transfer part of being listed as a single women, might have impacted the family’s passage was approval? Did having two teenage daughters who could soon work make the family more desirable immigrants? It would be interesting to know what the immigration incentives and contraints were at the time. Or maybe it determined where they slept on the ship?
Anyway, back on track.. she arrived in Lyttleton in 1858. So when did Mary Ann arrive in the Williams house hold in Timaru? I am having trouble working that out. There are no records (so far) that tell us when or how she made her way from Lyttelton to South Canterbury. Could she have been sent into service in Timaru soon after disembarking? Or did she spend time elsewhere first?
But I did find out that in the in the late 1870s the family settled in Sandietown, near Timaru, where Henry ran a bakery.
We also don’t know whether Mary Ann and Ann Williams ever met. If Mary Ann began working for the Williams family before Ann died in May 1860, she may have been employed as a nursemaid under Ann’s supervision. It’s just as possible that Mary Ann was hired after Ann’s death, to help care for the grieving household.
"It was during the middle 1860s that things went awry in Williams' domestic affairs. About 1860 his wife, Ann (nee Manry) collapsed and died at the doorway of Timaru Hotel. Her death was a great loss to him for it deprived him of the stability, sound guidance and controlling influence that his restless nature and easy business methods, required. In 1861 he married Mary Ann Gardner, the governess of his children. Of this marriage there was one child, Emily. The disparity of 25 years between the ages of man and wife created situations that proved more than the old whaler could cope with. Disharmony followed, Williams resorted to the Court to claim outstanding debts and in February 1865, sold his Timaru Hotel interest to John Melton and quit the town for some years. The Deed of Sale is now regarded as an historical record. It has been framed and is exhibited in the Timaru Public Library... . It seems possible also that the old pioneer possessed no real business acumen in the harder and more grasping sense or he would have exploited more fully the golden opportunities in a growing town and developing province. To these handicaps we must add the acute domestic confusion caused by the loss of a reliable, hardworking, and understanding first wife, and the incompatability and youthfulness of his second. From the 1860s onward his business needed a capable and trustworthy manageress; his children needed the guidance and care of a mature woman; he himself needed a sensible helpmate. He had instead an immature, extravagant and finally deserting second wife. But only a miracle could have made that marriage a success when considered against Williams’ age, background and temperament." - A quote from P. Williams, Grandson of Samuel Williams in 1959. From Book about Samuel Williams by Nola Towgood
We often reach to diaries to help us fill in the blanks and understand someones lives. Reading this 1959 account from a family member of Samuel Williams, I’m struck by how much it tells us about Sam, and how little it tells us about Mary Ann, his second wife. It calls her “immature” and “extravagant” and says she deserted him, but says nothing of her side. She was only sixteen when they married. A teenager caring for two young stepchildren and married to a grieving man twice her age trying to run his hotel, and rebuild after it was destroyed by fire. Through today’s lens, I see this reflectino from the family members as a tangible reflection shaped by its time, its author, and what he choose to remember. Mary Ann’s voice is missing, and I think that silence says as much as the words on the page. Whose stories get preserved... and whose get left out, or miss understood?
It also makes me wonder what Mary Ann’s own family was going through at the time. She had only recently arrived in New Zealand from Surrey as a 13-year-old immigrant, likely navigating culture shock, economic pressure, and the upheaval of resettlement. Her parents, Henry and Caroline, would later face financial and marital stress. These fragments suggest a family grappling with being newcomers to the area, maybe with high expectations and hopes, who faced hardship and survival in a young colony on the other side of the world from their family, friends and colleague. Seen through this lens, I think Mary Ann’s decision to marry Sam at sixteen doesn’t look like a romantic plotline or moral failing. It looks to me like a young woman newly arrived, possibly in service, possibly without much choice, doing what she thought she had to do.
What we do know is that on 2 March 1861, Mary Ann Gardner married Samuel Williams at St Mary’s Church in Timaru. She was only 16 at the time. I believe Sam would have been about 44. There are a few records with different ages, but I got 44 by working backwards. He said he was 66 when he died on 29 June 1883, so I subtracted 66 from 1883 to get an approximate birth year of 1817, then subtracted 1817 from 1861, which gave me 44. That means there was an age gap of 28 years.
Sam’s two children from his relationship with Ann were still very young. William, born in 1856, would have been about 5, and Rebecca, born in Ballarat in 1854, would have been around 6 or 7. This means that when 16-year-old Mary Ann became their stepmother, she was only about 9 or 10 years older than Rebecca. That adds some context to the emotional and historical depth of her story.
Mary Ann gave birth to her and Sam’s daughter, Emily Williams, on 7 October 1862. Emily later married Arthur James Gibbs on 12 April 1888 at All Saints Church in Dunedin. She died on 23 July 1942 at the public hospital in Gore. Arthur was born on 14 August 1862 in Oamaru, worked as a Jeweller in Gore, and died before Emily, in Gore on 11 October 1938. - Otago Daily Times Saturday, 15 OCT 1938, p. 20, column The Oamaru district/News of the day.
If you go by the newspapers and a family research by Nola Towgood, it seems the marriage between Mary Ann and Sam was not a success. Mary Ann left the relationship and took Emily with her. And there are newspapers that published Sam was not to be held responsible for her affairs. Seems brutal to publish your slit in the newspaper that way if you look at it with today's lens, but maybe that was a standard thing to do back then if a couple parted ways.
Somewhere between 1864 and 1867, Mary Ann formed a relationship with James Coles, a butcher from Somerset who had arrived in New Zealand in 1864. He is remembered for driving the first cattle over Arthur's Pass to Ross on the West Coast. Did she meet him shortly after he arrived? Was she already living on the West Coast by then?
Together they had four children:
James Edward Coles, b. 1868 Hokitika, d. 1880 Dunedin
Blanche Hayman Coles, b. 1870 Okarito, d. 1937 Wellington
George Henry Coles, b. & d. 1872 Hokitika
Henry George Coles, b. 1874 Hokitika, d. 1948 Hokitika
Mary Ann was listed as James Coles’ "reputed wife" in his will. He named her sole trustee and executrix, leaving his estate for the care and education of "my reputed children" and Mary’s daughter Emily. Interestingly, the will was dated 5 April 1871, before the birth of George and Henry George... so it seems two of her children weren’t accounted for in the legal document.
When James Coles died in 1878, Mary Ann was left to raise their children alone. She fostered her daughter Blanche (aged 8) to a family running a hotel in Okarito, and took her two sons, James Edward and Henry George, to Dunedin. James Edward sadly died just two years later, in 1880.
Henry George went on to have a long career with the Post Office, retiring at 51, then served as Town Clerk of Hokitika for 20 years. Emily, her daughter with Sam Williams, would have been 16 when James Coles died. Was she already working? Could she have been employed by the same publicans caring for Blanche? Again, the records leave gaps, so I am left with my imagination.
I felt sad to learn that Mary Ann Gardner died in Dunedin on 17 January 1888, aged around 43. I wonder how she would have reflected on her life and story. As an early European settler to arrive in Timaru, she hasn't been noted as a prominant person in the history books. But with my lens I see her as a significant part of the story of women who made the town, who helped make the community, and created her own legacy through caring for Ann and Sams raising her family
So when I first asked, "Who was Ann’s governess?" I had no idea the answer would lead from Surrey to Lyttelton, from Timaru to Hokitika, and finally to Dunedin. And yet, there is still so much we don’t know.
Did Ann and Mary ever meet? Was Mary Ann sent to Timaru alone as a teenager? Did her family remain in Canterbury while she built a life further south?
What we do know is that Mary Ann Gardner was more than just the young governess who married a widower. She was a child migrant, a working girl, a mother, a partner, and a survivor. Her life was shaped by movement, resilience, and quiet strength — the kind of woman whose story is often hidden in the margins.
Thanks to the suffrage petition records, we now know that Mary Ann’s mother, Caroline Gardner (Mrs C. Gardner), also lived in Timaru in the late 1870s, where her husband Henry ran a bakery in Sandietown, near Saltwater Creek. In 1880, Henry Gardner publicly stated in the newspaper that he would not acknowledge debts made by Caroline and their daughter Elizabeth. Caroline later lived in Dunedin with Elizabeth, and died in Kuri Bush in 1905.
Henry Gardner remained in Timaru and died on 7 August 1899, aged 85. He is buried in the Timaru Cemetery, Section General, Row 3, Plot 220. I never expected to find the grave of Samuel Williams father in law in Timaru!
Screen shot of a Timaru Cemetery Search. Looking for Mary Ann Gardner's father's grave.
Sometimes when visiting a grave you get wee surprises that lead on to more side quests. While the Councils cemetery search told me where to look, I didn't expect to find anyone burried with him, let along another man, a "friend of the family". According to Timaru Cemetery records, James Rae died at the age of 72 and was interred on 15 January 1902 in Section General, Row 3, Plot 220. Reads Patient Sufferers Gone To Rest.
Caroline’s younger daughter, Elizabeth Caroline Gardner, (later Lewis, then Brady) was born in Christchurch in 1859. She had two children with William Henry Lewis, a mechanical engineer, and later married Philip Henry Brady in 1908. Like her mother, Elizabeth signed the 1893 suffrage petition from Steep Street, Dunedin from the same address. She died in 1926 and is buried with William Lewis in Southern Cemetery, Dunedin.
Did Caroline’s move to Dunedin bring her closer to Mary Ann? Or was she following in her daughter’s footsteps? Mary Ann Gardner was in Dunedin by 1878, after the death of James Coles. She brought her sons James Edward and Henry George there, and James Edward died in Dunedin in 1880.
This part of Caroline’s and Elizabeth’s story is preserved in the official 1893 Suffrage Petition records: NZHistory.govt.nz - Mrs C. Gardner
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/suffragist/mrs-e-c-lewis Elizabeth Caroline Gardner was born in 1859 in New Zealand – the daughter of Henry Gardner, a baker, and Caroline. In the late 1870s the family settled in Sandietown, near Timaru, where Henry ran a bakery. Things do not appear to have gone well, as in October 1880 Henry put an advertisement in the paper stating: 'Any debts contracted by Mrs H Gardner and daughter, Elizabeth Gardner will not be acknowledged by Mr Henry Gardner, baker, Timaru.' Elizabeth had two children with William Henry Lewis, a mechanical engineer, in 1881 and 1885. When she signed the suffrage petition Elizabeth was living in Steep St, off Maitland St in Dunedin. Her mother was also living there. Elizabeth married Philip Henry Brady in 1908. William Lewis died at their daughter’s house in 1911 and Elizabeth also died at their daughter’s residence on 28 September 1926. She is buried with William in the Southern Cemetery.
Signed family name: Lewis
Signed given name: Mrs E. C.
Given address: Steep Street
Sheet number: 158
Town/Suburb: Central Dunedin
City/Region: Dunedin
I hunted hoping to find Mary Ann's signiture on the petition, with no luck I almost assumed maybe she didn't support the cause. But after working on the timeline, relaised that Mary Ann died in January 1888, which is five years before the petition was circulated in 1893, so she could not have signed it. I wonder if when her sister and mother signed it, they were thinking of Mary Ann and all the other women who missed the moment to make a stand and have their voices heard, and to reflect the support of those who couldn't.
Mary's daughter who she had with Sam Williams would have been 31 years old when the petition was circulating im 1893. I had a look but I couldn't find her.
As for Mary Ann’s and Sam Williams’ daughter Emily Williams, her later life remains largely undocumented. Born in 1862 in Timaru, Emily was just 16 when her mother’s partner James Coles died in 1878. At that time, Mary Ann took her sons to Dunedin, while her daughter Blanche was fostered out to publicans in Okarito. It is possible that Emily, as a working age teenager, may have found employment with the same household or elsewhere in Dunedin, though no specific records confirm this. She does not appear to have signed the 1893 suffrage petition under her maiden name, and no clear marriage or death record has yet been linked to her. Like many women of her time, her story fades into the background of the historical record, a reminder of how easily women's lives could become invisible unless recorded through legal documents or public events.
The petition is a scroll of hope that she never got to sign.
While the 1893 Women's Suffrage Petition was primarily signed by women, some men did sign it too.
Her son James Edward Coles died around the age of 12. Born 1868 and died 1880.
Her other son Henry George Coles born 1874 was only 19 years old in 1893, so underage, as the voting age was 21.
Blanche Hayman Coles who was born in 1870 would have been 23 in 1893. There is no record under “Blanche Coles” or “Blanche Hayman Coles” found in the 1893 petition.
I wonder how their experiences as women shaped by hardship, migration, and public judgement influenced their decision to sign. What did it mean to them — as a mother who had been publicly disowned by her husband, and a daughter who raised children outside of marriage — to stand up and add their names? I wonder how their lives were impacted by their rights, or lack thereof, in the new colony, and whether these experiences deepened their resolve to support the suffrage movement. Knowing they signed reminds me that they believed in their own worth, and that they saw hope in creating change for women who would come after them.
A photo from when I visited the display at Wellington in the National Library to view the signatures on the Womens Suffrage petition. Each of these people, mostly women put their name down to give me the rights and freedoms I have today. Learning about Mary Ann Gardner has made me revisit this experience of seeing the actual ink that was put to paper. And reminded me that you dont have to leave a big bold signifcant thing to make an impact... that even a signature can provide an important legacy for future generations.
Thier simple act of a signiture led to a political milestone in NZ was the granting of women the right to vote in parliamentary elections on 8 September 1893.
A “monster” rolled-up petition and 12 smaller petitions was submitted to Parliament on 28 July 1893. The petition, which was signed by 31,872 women aged 21 years and over, was organised by the WCTU (New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union) led by its national franchise superintendent Kate Sheppard. Only the “monster” petition has survived and is on display at He Tohu, National Library Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, Wellington. The petition’s contents have been digitised by Archives New Zealand and can be searched on the Women's Suffrage Petition Database on the NZHistory website, which also includes a ‘more’ link with further information about a signatory.
This database is what helped me hunt for history on Ann Gardner and her family.
Kate Sheppard National Memorial Christchurch City Libraries. CCL-KateSheppard-2013-03-25-IMG_1873 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. Sculpted by Dutch-born New Zealand who lived in Timaru for a time, artist Artist Margriet Windhausen. 1993. Stone and bronze monument to commemorate the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in New Zealand in 1993. The women featured are left to right,
Meri Mangakāhia of Te Tai Tokerau, who approached Te Kotahitanga (the Māori parliament) for women's suffrage
Amey Daldy of the Auckland Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Kate Sheppard
Ada Wells, a campaigner for girls' education
Harriet Morison, an advocate for working women, also from Dunedin
Helen Nicol, a women's suffrage campaigner who lived in Dunedin
Unveiled by Dame Catherine Tizard, the Governor-General of New Zealand. A time capsule containing news articles and information on women's lives in 1993 was placed inside the monument.
For 25 years from 1990, Artist Margriet Windhausen. and her husband Paul van den Bergh lived in Timaru in two churches that they moved to the site and converted into a home and studio.In 2014 they moved to the Kāpiti Coast. In 1993 she was awarded a New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal. wiki/Margriet_Windhausen
The Bee Hive in Wellington. And sculpture in glass of Kate Sheppard. - Photography By Roselyn Fauth
What This History Hunt Taught Me
Through the tangled threads of ship manifests, family records, and faded newspaper notices, this search for Mary Ann Gardner’s story revealed more than just one woman’s path. It uncovered the quiet, often overlooked realities of migration, resilience, and womanhood in colonial New Zealand. I have learned how easy it is to make assumptions when the facts are missing, and how important it is to ask better questions instead. We often read history through the loudest voices, but looking more closely with today’s lens reveals whose stories have been lost and how much richer our understanding becomes when we listen for them. Mary Ann’s life may not have made headlines, but her journey mattered. In tracing it, I found a deeper appreciation for the small acts of courage, care, and survival that built the foundations of our communities and that still echo forward in the legacies we carry today.
Alll thanks to good facebook messenger chats with Sarah, and the careful family research of Nola Towgood and Beverley Murray, we can now tell Mary Ann's story with more clarity — and more curiosity.
A. WILLIS, GANN & CO.'S LINE OF VESSELS FOR NEW ZEALAND
A list of emigrant passengers for Canterbury arriving in these ships, 1855–1858:
1855
May – Grasmere, Yeo – 97 passengers
August – Caroline Agnes?, Ferguson – 176 passengers
October – Cashmere, Pearson – 141 passengers
1856
January – Isabella Hercus, Sewell – 104 passengers
July – Sir Edward Paget, Wycherley – 166 passengers
October – Joseph Fletcher, Pook – 210 passengers
December – Egmont, Gibson – 145 passengers
1857
October – Glentanner, Bruce – 148 passengers
1858
February – Roehampton, Candler – 112 passengers
July – Maori, Petherbridge – 186 passengers
September – Zealandia, Foster – 394 passengers
Total: 1,851 souls (people)
The Indiana left Gravesend on the 6th of August 1858 with nearly 800 passengers bound for Canterbury Province, and the Clontarf was to follow in September with a similar number, both sailing direct to Lyttelton.
— R. Latter, Lyttelton, 9 November 1858
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/LT18581117.2.2.2
References & Sources
Canterbury Provincial Council Passenger Lists (1858), Archives New Zealand
Timaru Cemetery Records, Timaru District Council – timaru.govt.nz
Dunedin Cemetery Records, Dunedin City Council – dcc.govt.nz
Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand – paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
NZHistory – Suffrage Petition: Entry for Mrs C. Gardner – nzhistory.govt.nz/suffragist/mrs-c-gardner
Christchurch City Council Libraries https://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/Digitised/Emigration/EmbarkationLists/Indiana-1858/
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
DCC Cemetery Records http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/facilities/cemeteries/cemeteries-search
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Contributors:Special thanks to Sarah Best for sharing key insights, and to the late Nola Towgood and Beverley Murray, descendants of the Williams and Gardner families, whose genealogical work has greatly contributed to this blog. A hunt for whaling history, and then for Ann... is leading me to some facinating insights into stories of people and places of our past.
Fun fact the declaration of independance New Zealand, is displayed in the same space as the suffrage petition
