By the age of 20, she had married blacksmith Joseph Simpson (on Christmas Eve 1839) and had a daughter (Elizabeth, born 1841 or 1842).

Simpson became the sole nurse at Lyttelton Hospital in 1856, and Joseph found work in the town.

Their father, James Berry, died soon after arrival in Lyttelton, and the children were permitted to stay at the hospital with Simpson.

When she left the hospital in 1862, on her marriage to Captain David Ritchie, the Berry children moved with her to their new home.

The Home had been established by the visiting Maria Rye[4] and the Female Middle Class Emigration Society, which aimed to recruit women in England to go to the colonies as governesses, arrange their passages and find them positions on arrival.