Jane Holloway King Sampler 

Introduction

This finely stitched piece of embroidery is called a sampler. It was made by Jane Holloway King, who was born at Hohi (Oihi) Mission Station in the Bay of Islands in 1818. Samplers were designed to demonstrate knowledge and needlework skills, and they were often made by girls and young women as part of their education. As well as demonstrating Jane’s exceptional sewing skills, this sampler provides a rare glimpse into the lives and perspectives of women on mission stations in early colonial New Zealand.  

Jane’s parents, John and Hannah King, arrived in New Zealand in 1814 with Reverend Samuel Marsden to help establish the first permanent Pākehā settlement. The purpose of the mission was to encourage Māori to convert to Christianity by teaching them practical skills, known as the ‘civilised arts’, alongside religious education. Located at Hohi, next to Rangihoua Pā, the mission was set up on land provided by the Ngāpuhi leader Ruatara, who anticipated economic and social benefits from its presence. Jane was born only a few years after the mission was established and she spent most of her life on mission stations in the Bay of Islands—initially at Hohi, then at Te Puna, and later at Te Waimate, where she moved after marrying missionary Richard Davis in 1855. We know that she made the sampler sometime before she married because her maiden name (surname before she married) is sewn into the work.   

As one of the few Pākehā women living on a mission station, and as the eldest daughter of the family, Jane was expected to carry out the domestic tasks of the household such as cooking, cleaning, making clothes and child-rearing. She also taught domestic skills as well as reading and writing to Māori girls, who often lived with the King family. Boys, on the other hand, were taught carpentry and agricultural skills alongside their schoolwork. Jane’s sampler displays her needlework skills and her high level of education, but it also demonstrates the values of industry, domesticity and piety that were expected of a young missionary woman in the mid-19th century.

Sometime after her husband’s death in 1863, Jane moved to Auckland where her son, John King Davis, was attending school at the Church of England Grammar School in Parnell. John later became a pastor at several Anglican churches in Auckland before becoming an Assistant Master at Auckland Grammar School, where he taught history. Jane died in Parnell in 1894.  Her sampler was framed and displayed in the family home for many years but after John’s death in 1922, it was gifted to the Old Colonists Museum before later being transferred to Auckland Museum. 

Text by Lucy Mackintosh