J.E. H Ainslie

Biographical information provided by Stefanie Lash, Archives New Zealand, for the He Tohu exhibition:

This is the signature of Janet Elizabeth Hartley Ainslie. She was born in 1852 in Peshawar, which is now in Pakistan, but at the time was part of the British Empire. Her three siblings were also born in parts of India or Pakistan, because their father Robert Hartley Ainslie was an officer in the Bengal East India Army.

Janet’s father died in 1861 and her mother remarried shortly after, and the family migrated to New Zealand, eventually settling in Taranaki.

Janet never married, and moved to Wellington where she lived in Rhodes St, Newtown. She later moved to Matapiro, in the Hawke’s Bay. When she died in 1908 she was buried in New Plymouth.