HerStory

The science graduate who taught Timaru girls and led a college

1873–1939
Girls’ education leadership

From Saltwater Creek to wartime air traffic control

c. 1909–1997
One of New Zealand’s earliest women pilots

Writing and organising life at Te Waimate

Effie Studholme left something many nineteenth-century South Canterbury women did not: an account written in her own words.

She was born Effiegenia Maria Louisa Channon in London on 28 March 1838 and was known throughout her life as Effie. She came to New Zealand as a young woman and married Michael Studholme in April 1860. Soon afterwards, the couple travelled south to Te Waimate.

The surviving Cuddy had been constructed in 1854, before Effie arrived. Heritage New Zealand records that Michael built a larger timber homestead to coincide with their marriage. Effie therefore did not begin married life as the permanent resident of the Cuddy, although the building remained part of the station environment around her.

Effie and Michael had ten children. Their household also included relatives, a governess, three maids and frequent visitors. Her son Edgar later recalled that 17 family members and a governess could sit down to meals while three women worked in the kitchen. At major gatherings, the household might cater for 50 people. His account credits Effie’s hospitality, but it also makes clear that this work was collective and depended upon paid women whose names have not yet been recovered.

Contemporary evidence shows Effie participating beyond the household. At a Waimate community gathering in January 1869, the Timaru Herald reported that Mrs Studholme, assisted by other women and men, had taken considerable trouble to organise amusements and help make the day successful. This is modest but direct evidence of practical community organising.

Effie also recorded her experiences. Her privately circulated Reminiscences of 1860 described her marriage and journey south. Large portions were later incorporated into her son Edgar’s 1940 book, Te Waimate: Early Station Life in New Zealand. The National Library believes the digitised book has no known copyright.

After Michael’s death in 1886, Effie remained associated with Te Waimate during difficult financial years. Around 1910 she moved to Timaru, where she continued writing and made her home a gathering place for her family. She died in 1917. These details come principally through her son’s affectionate family history and should be compared with probate, property and contemporary records.

Effie’s story must also be placed within a longer history. Te Waimatemate was not empty country awaiting settlement. Te Huruhuru and other Waitaki Māori lived there, and Te Huruhuru led a community established beside the Waimate River before Michael Studholme selected land for a sheep run. Any fuller account of the station requires mana whenua perspectives and should not present pastoral occupation as the beginning of the place’s history.

Effie’s most securely demonstrated contribution lies in the household and community work she helped organise and in the memories she preserved. Her writing gives later readers a woman’s viewpoint on travel, marriage, domestic life and place, while also reminding us to look for the governesses, maids, relatives and Māori communities whom family histories often left at the edges.

Read the existing WuHoo story: The Cuddy. The Women. The Gifted Rose

Sources
Papers Past: Te Waimate: Early Station Life in New Zealand
Contains Edgar Studholme’s family history and substantial passages from Effie’s own Reminiscences of 1860. It supports her name, birth date, household, writing and later move to Timaru, while retaining the limitations of a son’s commemorative account.
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga: The Cuddy
Supports the building chronology, Effie’s arrival as Michael’s wife, their ten children and the heritage status of the Cuddy.
Timaru Herald, 16 January 1869: Waimate
Provides contemporary evidence of Effie working with others to organise community amusements.
Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: Te Huruhuru
Establishes the Māori community at Te Waimatemate and Te Huruhuru’s leadership before the Studholme station was established.

The Woodbury woman remembered with a working library

1867–1936
Rural women’s leadership

Writing women’s experience into South Canterbury’s record

1834-1916
Author
Early Settler

Painting the scale and light of the Mackenzie Country

1885-1975
High-country landscape artist and wartime nurse

The librarian who reorganised how Timaru read

1878–1936
Chief librarian

The Timaru matron whose service was later honoured

– 1929
Nursing Leadership, Public Dispute and Lasting Recognition

The survivor at the centre of the Timaru poisoning case

c.1855–1925
Survival and resilience

A Timaru nurse whose care continues through others

1896-1973
Nurse

The widow whose life survives between the legal lines

c.1845/46–1902
Widow, mother, caregiver
Legal resilience

Art for Timaru and a home for older people

1885–1972

Waimate’s doctor in ordinary days and epidemic

1873-1918
Doctor

The woman remembered in a Church Street building

c.1832–1904
Early Timaru settler
Jackson Memorial Sunday School

From a Timaru classroom to national education leadership

1866–1949
School principal and education advocate

First woman elected to the Timaru City Council

1904-1999
Councillor, 1950–1962 and 1965–1968;
Deputy mayor, 1956–1959;
Mayor, 1959–1962.

The trained nurse behind an early Timaru private hospital

Birth unknown–1956
Nurse
Private hospital founder

Craighead’s first principal in its diocesan era

1892–1930
Mathematics teacher, school principal
Anglican education leader