She helped hold together a family whose connections reached South Canterbury
c.1805–1888
Charitable work
Anglican community
Harper family
Canterbury
Emily Wooldridge Harper is usually found in the historical record beside her husband, Henry John Chitty Harper, the first Anglican Bishop of Christchurch. Yet the surviving evidence shows that she was not simply a background figure.
Emily married Henry at Winchester, England, on 12 December 1829. They had 15 children. Before the family agreed to emigrate to Canterbury, Emily took part in investigating the practical questions involved, including the conditions the family would face after moving across the world.
The family arrived in Canterbury in 1856. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography describes Emily as the family’s “mainstay” and an effective manager of large households. This was substantial, skilled and largely unpaid work. A family of that size, combined with the hospitality and responsibilities surrounding Bishopscourt, required planning, judgement, organisation and care.
Emily also took part in social and charitable activities. A history of the Christchurch Girls’ Friendly Society records that “Mrs Harper” became its president when the organisation was formally established in 1882. The society offered classes, recreation, employment assistance, help during illness and accommodation for girls and young working women. The date and Anglican setting make Emily the likely president, although her full identity still needs confirmation from the original minutes.
Emily’s South Canterbury connection came principally through her children.
Her daughter Ellen Shephard Tripp lived at Mount Peel and Ōrāri Gorge and later recorded her experiences in My Early Days. Another daughter, Emily Weddell Acland, became closely associated with Mount Peel. Her son Henry William Harper served as Archdeacon of Timaru and Westland and later as vicar of St Mary’s, Timaru.
Ellen’s memoir preserves one particularly tangible trace of her mother. She recorded that Emily had made a piece of church needlework in 1844, originally used as the centre of an altar frontal at Mortimer in Berkshire. The work was brought to New Zealand and continued in church use. The final church named in Ellen’s account has not yet been identified with certainty, so it should not be assumed that the textile reached Woodbury or another South Canterbury church without further evidence.
Emily’s children’s achievements belong to them, and we cannot claim that she personally shaped South Canterbury simply because they lived and worked here. Her story is nevertheless important. She helped sustain the family network from which these South Canterbury connections grew, participated in charitable work, and left behind skilled handiwork remembered by her daughter many decades later.
Emily died on 10 June 1888.
Her life reminds us that women’s influence is not always recorded through offices, speeches or buildings. Sometimes it survives through the households they organised, the decisions they helped make, the people they supported and the work their own hands created.
Impact: Emily helped sustain a large emigrating family and an important Canterbury household. Her organisational and charitable work contributed to the networks that connected Christchurch with Mount Peel, Ōrāri Gorge and Timaru.
Sources
Colin Brown, “Harper, Henry John Chitty”, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Te Ara:
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1h8/harper-henry-john-chitty
Ellen Shephard Tripp, My Early Days, Whitcombe and Tombs, 1929, digitised by Papers Past:
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/books/ALMA1929-9917502903502836-My-early-days
Fiona McKergow, “Girls’ Friendly Society”, Women Together, NZHistory:
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/women-together/girls-friendly-society
Henry Jacobs, Colonial Church Histories: New Zealand, 1887:
https://anglicanhistory.org/nz/jacobs_histories1887/04.02.html
Research note: Emily’s personal presence in South Canterbury has not yet been confirmed. Further research into Harper, Acland and Tripp family correspondence may reveal whether she visited Timaru, Mount Peel or Ōrāri Gorge.