Sarah Selwyn

Sarah Harriet Selwyn ( Richardson; 2 September 1809 – 24 March 1907) was the wife of George Augustus Selwyn, the first Anglican bishop of New Zealand and later of the Diocese of Lichfield, in England. Often left behind to manage missionary stations while her husband travelled throughout New Zealand and the islands of the western Pacific Ocean, Sarah Selwyn contributed to the work of building the hierarchy of the Church of England in New Zealand from 1841 to 1868.

Her humanitarian idealism as well as her own personal experiences among the Māori people fuelled her criticism of British and New Zealand policy. Together with Mary Ann Martin and Caroline Abraham, Sarah Selwyn contributed her private correspondence for a publication protesting at the British colonial policies of land confiscation and military conquests against the Māori in New Zealand.

Early life Sir John and Lady Harriet Richardson (née Hudson)Sarah Harriet Selwyn was born 2 September 1809 in Wanlip, Leicestershire, England, at the childhood home of her mother Lady Harriet Richardson (died 1839). Wanlip Hall had been inherited by her grandmother, Catherine Susanna Palmer, the first wife of Sir Charles Hudson, 1st Baronet. She spent much of her childhood in London, but, due to his asthma, her father, Sir John Richardson (1771–1841) retired from his service as judge of the Court of Common Pleas. When she was fourteen, the family spent long periods in southern Europe, including Malta.

Sarah had no formal education, a governess for a few years, and tutors in dancing, French, writing and Latin. However, she read with her father in history and literature. Lady Harriet died in March 1839, a few months before Sarah was to be wed. At that time he was the curate in the parish of Windsor while also serving as a tutor at Eton College.

They had two sons, both of whom became Anglican priests: William (1840–1914), who was born at Eton,

Life in New Zealand When Canon William Selwyn turned down the appointment for a new bishopric for New Zealand,

CMS Mission House at Paihia, watercolour by Rev. Henry Williams By June 1842 Sarah Selwyn journeyed from Sydney to Paihia in the Bay of Islands in the Northland Region of the North Island of New Zealand where she lived with the Anglican missionary activists Henry Williams and his wife Marianne Williams. Here she saw the strong role of women as educators and support for Māori converts within the New Zealand Church Missionary Society (CMS). A week or so later, she moved to her first home at the Te Waimate Mission in Waimate North. There Bishop George Selwyn established St John's College using his residence and adjacent buildings to train candidates for ordination into the Anglican Church. He left within days to journey around the country for six months, and he left his wife and his chaplain, Rev. William Cotton in charge of the school.

Sarah Selwyn continued learning the language and visited the local families, attending to the sick. She was treated with great respect and became known among the Māori as Mata Pihopa (Mother Bishop). However, Sarah Selwyn grew increasingly sick from "severe nervous headache" and the Bishop found her a retreat where he stored his library at the Stone Store, Kerikeri.

In 1844 Bishop Selwyn began moving St John's College south to Tāmaki in eastern Auckland (now the suburb of Meadowbank, and in June 1846 she moved with her two sons onto the campus. There she supervised and trained the married Māori converts and their children. She also started a primary school that enrolled the local children of the European settlers (the Pākehā) as well. The two women served as proof-readers for the College Press as it began producing parts of the Bible as well as schoolbooks in Māori. While the Bishop was away, Sarah Selwyn conducted the weekly audit of supplies for the college and maintained the schedule for the college schooner that was used for transportation. She oversaw the behaviour of the students as they worked to acculturate to the use of British clothes, accoutrements and manners as well as hostess for the many visitors interested in the college.

In 1848, the Selwyns sent their seven-year-old son William, and then in 1853 ten-year-old John, to England to attend school at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. Meanwhile, the Bishop's mission to Melanesia had more fully developed and the Melanesian Mission was founded in 1849. Sarah Selwyn supported this work as a teacher herself during her travels to the various islands with her husband. At Norfolk Island she was presented with a surf board her students had made. shows that the campus included: a printing office; a wash house; the Bishop's house (a two-storied stone building); English school; dining hall; a kitchen; the Māori adult school (a two-storey building which included the weaving room and a surgery); St John's College Chapel with a belfry on its gabled roof; two school buildings; the stables as an outbuilding to the tall half-timbered weaver's house; and, a well near two more houses and the carpenter's shop.

800 px |center |Watercolour of St John's College campus by Caroline Abraham in 1851, lithographed by Miss Cotton c1862

Margaret Frances Selwyn was born at St John's College on 5 February 1850. She died after a few months old while her father was overseas. When he returned, she was buried on 25 February 1851 in the St John's College graveyard.

Caroline Abraham wrote that "Sasa" (her nickname for her cousin Sarah Selwyn) "used to shut herself up in her room & come out only to slave away at some drudgery, or some teaching work, & look distressed & one dared not notice it, least she shd. put on a forced cheerfulness."

Sarah and George Selwyn visited England in 1854 to give updates on their work in New Zealand and recruit funders as well as more missionaries. They were invited to Windsor where they dined with Queen Victoria. The three women were close friends and helped each other in their various endeavours. They came to be called "The Three Graces" in colonial social circles. thumb

Public response to the Waitara purchase

Bishop Selwyn had long advocated for Māori rights, and Sarah supported him in this as well as in the defence of the Treaty of Waitangi which had since 1840 recognised Māori communal ownership of their lands and other possessions. In 1859 groups of Māori led by Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke opposed the colonial government's attempts to purchase land near the Waitara River in north Taranaki. This led to the military invasion by Governor Thomas Gore Browne and the Taranaki Wars. Several prominent citizens and missionaries published formal public statements in newspapers and pamphlets protesting against those politicians and settlers pushing for a military solution and uncontested access to the rich farming land held by collective groups of Māori.

Five of Sarah Selwyn's letters (dated May, August and October 1860), two by Caroline Abraham (dated October and April 1860), as well as four letters by Mary Ann Martin (dated May, August and October 1860) were included in a 106-page pamphlet, "Extracts of Letters from New Zealand." While their husbands used newspapers, public speeches and books for their writings about the events at Taranaki, the women expressed their views in personal letters to frame the issue on moral grounds. This allowed them to participate in political discourse beyond their domestic circle in New Zealand and in England. In defending her husband's objection to the Governor's actions, Sarah's private letter to her cousin Mary Anne Palmer, a sister of Caroline Abraham, (dated 30 August 1860) started with "I must write a pamphlet, or I shall burst." She argued that the colonial government, the governor, the military leaders and white settlers, all had: ... rushed into a bloody quarrel without trying all other methods of settling the dispute first; assuming that the natives are rebels before they have done one single thing to prove themselves to be so, and denying them the ordinary privileges of British subjects, which the Treaty of Waitangi declare them to be ... it goes to our hearts to see a noble race of people stigmatized as rebel, and driven to desperation, by the misrule of those who are at the same time lowering their own people in their eyes." Even later in life, in her Reminiscences written in the 1890s for her children and friends, Sarah Selwyn had sharp words for "the blindness and wrong-headedness of the Ministry" during this time of war. and was buried with her husband at Lichfield Cathedral.

Legacy The Sarah Selwyn Hospital (opened in 1998) and the twenty-six acre Selwyn Village (established in 1954), provides a rest home offering dementia care and independent living located in Auckland near the Waitematā Harbour.