Ann Judson

Biography and image contributed by Wendy Crane.

Ann Sutherland was born 1839 in Helensdale, Scotland.

In 1869 at Woodend, North Canterbury, she married James Judson, eldest son of Sarah and William Judson. They had a family of 4 boys and 5 girls.

James was very active in the community – the Woodend School, the Library, and cricket. A man of good vision and foresight, he saw the need for a threshing mill service for the farming district. He purchased a portable steam engine and mill from England. Made to requirements it took 3 years before delivery, and cost him £521.13s.1d. Later the plant was upgraded by replacing the horse drawn engine with a self-propelled traction engine.

The couple’s first house and stables were on land he obtained from his father, at the end of Judson’s Road, while the engine and mill were stored in sheds on his father’s property until the family moved to a new two-storied house on the Main North Road, built of timber cut from the Oxford bush.

Ann was 54 when she signed the Suffrage petition. She died at Woodend in 1919, aged 80 years.