Agnes Davison

Biography contributed by Wayne Church

'Agnes Davison … wore high elastic sided boots and used a button hook to lace them up. She had a mind of her own and was a very fast walker, always meeting things as they came and not before', observed her grandson Bob Lynn. [1]

Agnes (also known as Nancy) Hume Davison was a determined and hard‑working woman. She was also a great storyteller, and particularly enjoyed retelling tales of the hardships and ambitions of the Davison family.

Agnes was born in 1845 and baptised in 1846 at the 1st Ahoghill Presbyterian Church [2] in the village of Ahoghill, Ballymena, in County Antrim, Ireland. Her parents were Joseph and Agnes (nee Gavin) Houston. Agnes was born during the Potato Famine –   a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland.

On 6 February 1866, Agnes married William Davison in Ahoghill [3] and over the next eight years had four children: Alex, John, Elizabeth, and Margaret. The Davison family then left Ireland for the long voyage to Australia, sailing on the St Vincent from Plymouth, England on 21 August 1874 and arriving in Adelaide on 5 November 1874. [4]

The Davisons bought land near Burra Burra in South Australia. They were soon joined by William’s sister Sarah Davison and Samuel Campbell, and the two families grew wheat and raised cattle on their farms.

Often William was away for several days at a time taking loads of wheat to the nearest town, leaving Agnes alone with the children. One night she went outside to chase away an intruder and was hit over the head with a spade. Agnes had the scar across her forehead for the rest of her life. Agnes kept a gorse knife by her bed when William was away, and one night she thought she saw a man in her room. William’s new suit was hanging on the bed post, and in the dark Agnes had hacked the suit to pieces.

Agnes and William had five more children in South Australia: William, Annie, Olive, Agnes, and Priscilla. In 1888, after four years of devastating drought, the Davisons decided to leave for New Zealand, where some of their brothers and sisters had settled. Leaving Alex and John behind in Australia, the Davison family travelled from Burra Burra by train to Port Augusta, and then to Dunedin on the Union Steamship Company sailing ship Rotomahana. They bought a farm on the Winslow Willowby Road near Willowby in the Ashburton district. Their tenth child, Alice, was born in the following year [5].

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was active in the Ashburton area during that time [6] and it is likely Agnes was attracted to its cause, signing the Women’s Suffrage Petition in 1893.

Tragedy struck that year, when Agnes’ daughter Priscilla was scratched by a cat when she was trying to get it out from under the house. The scratch became infected and Priscilla died, at the age of nine.

During the 1890s, the Davisons bought another 20 acres of land on Maronan Road, near the Tinwald Domain in Ashburton. Sometime in the next decade, they left Willowby and moved to Ashburton. William and Agnes lived near the top end of Carters Road in Allenton, then on the corner of Wills and Grigg Streets in Ashburton.

William died in 1912. In 1926, when Agnes was 81, she married her brother-in-law David Kerr [7]. Agnes died two years later on 21 October 1928 and is buried alongside William in the Ashburton Cemetery.[8]