Anne Maria Waters

Anna came to Palmerston after marrying a Territory policeman, Nicholas Joseph Waters, on 1 March 1892 in St Peters Cathedral, North Adelaide. The couple lived in a house on the corner of Smith Street and the Esplanade, then moved to a cottage next to the Church of England. When the women's suffrage legislation became law in 1895, Anna registered to vote, signing the enrolment form on 22 April 1895, almost as soon as the rolls were distributed. By May the following year Anna voted in her first election. In 1901, she was involved in a variety of fundraising activities particularly for the church. Anna was an accomplished artist, producing beautiful paintings of the wildflowers around the Northern Territory. With money raised from the sale of her paintings, she provided the Church of England tennis court as one of her gifts to the community. Anna sold some of her paintings overseas and she received a letter from the Deaconess of the Chinese Girls School, Government Hill, Singapore, thanking her for her letter and sending her money for her baskets which she said sold well. When Anna died she left shares and money to Mrs Bell who looked after her when she became an invalid and the balance of her estate went to the Anglican Bishop of Carpentaria, for the Church of England, to which she devoted so much of her adult life. Anna was one of the Territory's wealthiest women. The Waters had no children. During the Second World War Anna made a considerable amount of money for the Red Cross and the war effort through selling her paintings.ArtistCommunity Servic