E. Callender

Notes provided by Helen Edwards, who has carried out extensive research on the women who signed Sheet 156 including mapping where they lived. Download pdf of this research here.

Jane Baird (Jean) Callender [J. Callender, Roslyn] (No. 30) Age in 1893: 35 or Callender, Jane Scott nee Ross [J. Callender, Roslyn] and

Margaret Moodie (Maggie) Ormiston Callender [M. Callender, Roslyn. (No. 31) Age in 1893: 42 and

Eliza (Nell) Callender [E. Callender, Roslyn] (No. 32) Age in 1893: 34

Land description: Allotments 1-5, Block 1 of Archibald Anderson’s Extension of Roslyn. Address: Highgate, between Alpha (Delta) Street and the top of Ross Street; 69, 71 Highgate, 2-6 Delta Street.

In 1893, the household immediately to the south of N. Y. A. Wales’s residence in High Street contained three generations of Callenders. Thomas Callender, an accountant from Edinburgh, married Jane Baird in 1850. Jane was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire. They emigrated with four children in 1863 on the Sir William Eyre. Jane gave birth to a daughter in Dunedin in 1864, and died in childbirth in 1867. Thomas was known as the father of the sport of curling in New Zealand, having started the Dunedin Curling Club in 1873. He was also a keen bowler, and is credited with introducing bowling into the country.

The household included his three eldest daughters, Margaret Moodie Ormiston, born in Paisley in 1851; Jane Baird, born in 1858 and Eliza, born in 1859, both in Anderston, Glasgow. Maggie kept house for her father and sisters after her mother’s death. She and Eliza signed the petition. However, there were two women called ‘J. Callender’ in the household. One was Jane Baird Callender, and the other was Jane Scott Ross Callender, born in Glasgow about 1862. She arrived in New Zealand about 1877 and in 1881 married Thomas Archibald Callender, Thomas’s eldest son. By 1905, Thomas and Jane had moved to South Dunedin with their seven children. I think the signature belongs to the second sister, Jane Baird Callender, known as Jean, who became the first warden at St Margaret’s College, a venerable Hall of Residence at the University of Otago. After Thomas’s death in 1902 the sisters moved south along High Street to Craigforth (No. 19), beside the Roslyn Presbyterian Church.

Eliza died at Craigforth in 1930 and Margaret at Seacliff in 1931. They are buried in the Southern Cemetery with their parents. Jean died at Prospect House, Dunedin, in 1934. Her ashes were scattered.

The late Mr Thomas Callender. Otago Witness, 16 July 1902. (Papers Past). Personal communication from Sheila Ward.