Sarah Ann McCauley

George Thomas McCauley married my grandmother, Sarah Ann (Pat) Ford, in Kaponga, Taranaki, on 4 August 1908; she was born in 1878 in Opawa, Christchurch, in the South Island of New Zealand. Sarah Ann was the third of the eight children of Henry James Ford, born in St. Giles, London, England, on 1 October 1851, and Emily Ann Ford (nee Gadd), born in East Street, Bedminster, Bristol, England on 13 August 1853 and christened on 11 September 1853 in St. Paul's, Bedminster. Henry James Ford and Emily Ann Gadd, my great grandparents, were married in St. Mark's Church, Opawa, Christchurch, New Zealand on 20 August, 1873.

Henry James Ford's daughter, my grandmother Sarah Ann Ford, and her sister, Eva Emily, opened the "Oriental Tea Rooms" in Eltham in 1904 and, two years later, took over a two storey building "Westford House" that they converted to a Boarding House and Dining Rooms. Reportedly staunch members of the Women's Christian Temperance Movement, they offered an alternative to the pub and provided meals and lodgings for the many men who worked in the area, one of whom was Sarah's husband-to-be, George Thomas McCauley.

My grandmother, who was apparently an accomplished seamstress and musician, playing the harp and mouth-organ, was long dead when I was born.

Source: Bob Anderson http://www.bobanderson.co.uk/mccauleyfull/?rq=sarah%20ann%20ford