Sarah Jane Kirk

Sarah Jane Kirk (née Mattocks; 22 January 1829 – 15 January 1916) was a New Zealand temperance leader, suffragist and human rights activist. She served as president of the Wellington chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand (WCTU NZ) for over a decade and served as one of the Union's national vice presidents. Early life and emigration to New Zealand Sarah Jane Kirk was born in Warwickshire, England, on 22 January 1829, the eldest daughter of Mary Mattocks and a Coventry weaver/warehouseman Joseph Mattocks. Her brother Mark was three years younger, and two sisters (Mary and Emily) were nine and ten years younger respectively. She earned her living as a silk marker, and at the age of twenty-one, on Christmas Day 1850, she married Thomas Kirk, a bookkeeper in the local timber company. In 1862 she emigrated with Thomas and their four children to New Zealand with four children – travelling 96 days at sea. Their first-born son died during the times of great poverty when they arrived in Auckland on 9 February 1863. She birthed another five children in New Zealand between 1864 and 1870, two of whom (twins) died as infants, and another daughter died aged 5 years old. Fresh off the boat, Thomas Kirk earned money by breaking stones at Mount Eden for building roads. By 1867 Thomas Kirk had begun his scientific explorations of the natural world, becoming well known for his specimen collections and writings on the botany of New Zealand. He served as a museum curator and taught botany at the Auckland College and Grammar School where his two sons, Thomas William Kirk and Harry Kirk, attended. There is not yet any documentation as to the education of their daughter, Amy Kirk, who went on to become a teacher and church worker. Perhaps she stayed home to help her mother through her pregnancies and deaths of three children. Lily May and Cybele Ethel were born while the family was living in Auckland. Leadership in Wellington: church and women's clubs In 1874, the Kirk family moved to Wellington where Thomas Kirk was hired as a professor natural sciences at Wellington College. There was no running water in the Kirk family's little cottage on Tinakori Road, and for some time they carried water from the home of New Zealand's Premier, Sir Julius Vogel, across the road. She enrolled her younger daughters, Lily May and Cybele in the nearby Greenwood Terrace school for girls run by activist sisters Ellen, Mary and Annie Greenwood.