Sarah Heap

Biography Sarah Miller was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, England on 27 November 1870, as the daughter of Elizabeth Ann Dixon and Henry Miller. While little is known of Sarah's early life, she was already a schoolteacher when she married a master saddler by the name of Henry Heap on 30 March 1893 at Stalybridge, Lancashire. In 1904 or 1905, Sarah and Henry left England to live in Auckland, New Zealand.

In Auckland, Heap became widely known as an expert drill mistress for girls and physical education teacher. Although she tried to create a physical training college for women in Auckland, that effort failed and she decided to establish herself as a teacher. By 1908, Heap headed the physical training program at the Diocesan High School for Girls. In 1909 she was the visiting drill mistress at the Auckland Girls' Grammar School even as she was teaching at other secondary schools such as Mount Eden Collegiate. In 1910, she was giving classes for girls at the YWCA and the following year she began working part-time at the Auckland Training College (now part of the University of Auckland). By 1912, Sarah Heap was regarded as "the country's leading authority on the physical training of girls".