Biographical information provided by Linda McGregor for the He Tohu exhibition:
Jane Cowie Clark Maxwell (nee Valentine) was born in Montrose, Forfarshire, Scotland around 1849. Around 1870 she emigrated to New Zealand with her parents Archibald and Charlotte Thomson Valentine to join her brothers Archibald and John, who had emigrated earlier.
Jane married George Maxwell on 21 April 1870, who had come to Dunedin as a child. They settled at Waikouaiti where they farmed. The couple had eleven children: Charlotte Thomson (born 1871), James (1872), Ellen Taylor (1874), Mary Harden (1876), George Duncan (1879), Jane (1881), Isabella (1883), Emily (1887), Elizabeth (1889), Herbert (1891) and Dorothy (1892). Her daughter Charlotte Thompson Maxwell also signed the Women's Suffrage Petition.
Jane was widowed in 1924, and died on 8 September 1930 aged 81. She is buried in the Waikouaiti Cemetery.
