Into the Spotlight: Sharing Archival Objects through Wikimedia Commons 

As the student placed at the Fletcher Trust Archives for the 2025/2026 Auckland War Memorial Museum Wikipedia Summer Studentship, I would never have supposed I would encounter and get to work with 19^th century textiles. But as I have discovered during the experience, archives and Wikipedia lead to unexpected places!  

The Fletcher Trust Archives is a business archive holding records of hundreds of New Zealand companies under the umbrella the Fletcher Challenge Group, and houses information on the country’s business, commerce, architectural, and built history. The studentship had a focus on local Auckland histories, leading me to write a Wikipedia page for early Auckland businessman William Winstone (1843-1924). His family and business records are held by the Fletcher Trust Archives.  

In researching William, I encountered his wife, Ellen, a compelling figure in her own right. Born Ellen Sperrin in 1831, in Backwell, Somersetshire, she had trained as a teacher, according to one of her samplers, at the Home and Colonial School Society. She went on to marry her 16-year-old ex-student William Winstone in 1859 when she was 28. He left for New Zealand that year, and she gave birth to their only biological child, Eliza Annie.¹ She followed William with their daughter a few years later once he had established himself, sailing from England to Auckland.

Ellen supported William’s haulage business ventures, cooking meals for the growing number of drivers under his employ (and roof, in the case of those living in driver accommodations adjoining the family home in Hayden Street.) ² William’s brother George joined the business, forming W. & G. Winstone Ltd at an opportune time, as the following year, in 1870, William was injured in a quarry explosion, and Ellen was said to have nursed him back to health. The couple also adopted a son, Ellen’s 10 year old nephew Frederick, who arrived in Aotearoa in 1872, adding another member to the household she ran.

As the Winstone partnership continued its success, Ellen and William moved into the new stable complex in Symonds Street, in Auckland city, into their villa ‘Failand’ (probably named after the school at which Ellen and William had met). William went into semi-retirement in the late 1890s, so he and Ellen moved to Mount Albert into a single storey home William had built for their old age, called ‘Tyntesfield.’³ Ellen died in 1904, aged 73, and was buried at Waikumete cemetery in Glen Eden, Auckland. William remarried several years later, but was buried with her upon his death in 1924.⁴  

I was able to gather out some basic biographical insight on Ellen from sources on William Winstone, but she is essentially a footnote in his published histories. Most primary sources I found were inadmissible on Wikipedia, and she did not meet notability requirements for her own Wikipedia page. I created a Wikidata item for her, aggregating the knowledge I had collected, but had come face to face with a facet of the biography gender gap as highlighted by the Women in Red Wikiproject. The stark realities of the survival bias of women’s histories versus their husbands’ were laid out in front of me, and I realised that however interesting, and likely important to the success of the Winstone’s company Ellen was through her invisible labour in the household, I could not give her a biography as there was simply not enough information available. 

At this point, I was informed of the existence of Ellen’s samplers. The Archives hold two embroidery samplers donated by her great-great-granddaughter. I had the opportunity to take them out and examine them in person. The earlier sampler is smaller than the second, and dated to 1859, but is likely older, potentially completed by a 10-year-old Ellen in 1841, which would make it the earliest item in the Archives! It is quite small, around 10 x 15 cm, and tidily sewn in navy-blue thread on a finely woven piece of fabric. It features a decorative border, alphabet, a psalm, her name, and the location and day – but annoyingly not the year! It was, however, definitely completed in England before her emigration to New Zealand, and gives the viewer an insight into her life before marriage, as Ellen Sperrin.

The second sampler is much larger, around 30 x 25 cm in size, and embroidered on much coarser fabric, with a thicker thread that looks like it could have some wool in the composition. There are multiple colours of thread, sometimes switching mid-line of text, indicating some scarcity which would make sense, living in colonial Aotearoa. The embroidery itself is less intricate and neat than the earlier sampler, which could be explained by her position as a busy married woman with two children in 1887, running a household and being the wife of a public figure. Her personality shines through in this sampler in the choice of quotes she applied: “Honour and obey God/ To err is human, to forgive divine/ Be true and [just]/ It is much better to reprove/ than to be angry secretly.” One may surmise she valued her Christian faith, and let her feelings be known rather than supressing them!  

Both the Fletcher Trust Archives and the Auckland War Memorial Museum participate in Wikimedia’s open access initiative by uploading images out of copyright from their collections to Wikimedia Commons. While examining the samplers I was able to photograph them, and add these images to the Archives online collection as well as upload them to Wikimedia commons as free use images due to the age of the samplers, and I, as the photographer, releasing my rights.

I was able to link the various images I had taken of the samplers at different angles to one another through the ‘other versions’ feature in the summary box, so viewers could have the option to swipe through each image of the sampler in one place. I also included links back to the Fletcher Trust Archives in the summary section to direct interested viewers back to the Archives’ online collection, and its Winstone related material. I included the Commons uploads in my William Winstone Wikipedia page gallery, Ellen’s Wikidata item, the Fletcher Trust Archives GLAM Wikipedia page, and the Commons category ‘Images from the Fletcher Trust Archives‘.

Wikimedia Commons’ open access in conjunction with collection items from the Fletcher Trust Archives allowed me to give Ellen Winstone a more fleshed-out identity online. The open access sharing of her samplers enabled her to exist as her own entity digitally, a privilege many wives in history do not get, thanks to the survival and accessibility of her work. The Commons uploads allowed the wishes of the donor of the samplers, Ellen’s great-great-granddaughter, to be realised; they are now able to be ‘enjoyed by many’ beyond the limited capacity of in-person visits.

At the start of my Winstone family research, the search terms for Ellen Winstone or Ellen Sperrin would come up with a few pages relating to her male relatives with slight mentions of her, and her burial site on Find a Grave. Thanks to the open access nature of Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, and Wikidata combined with contributions from the Fletcher Trust Archives, photos of Ellen and her samplers now come up as well as her Wikidata item, and online collection items from the Fletcher Trust Archives, thanks to fresh prioritisation by search engines. Ellen may not be an encyclopaedic figure suitable for Wikipedia, but through other open access avenues in the Wikimedia world, she has received a small spotlight in the digital landscape.

1. Whitfield, Paul (2014). Stickney, Suzanne (ed.). The First 150 Years: Winstone Aggregates. Auckland: Winstone Aggregates. pp. 32-33. ISBN 978-0-473-27097-1. ↩︎
2. Simpson, Frank (1965). The First Century: A Centenary Review of Winstone Limited. Auckland: Winstone Limited. p. 7. ↩︎
3. “”Tyntesfield” Allendale Road, Mt Albert” (PDF). Mount Albert Historical Society Inc. (31): 1–2. July 2015 – via Mount Albert Historical Society. ↩︎
4.  “Ellen Winstone (1832-1904) – Find a Grave Memorial”. www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 15 February 2026.  ↩︎