Margaret McGregor

Notes provided by Helen Edwards, who has carried out extensive research on the women who signed Sheet 156. Download pdf of this research here.

Margaret McGregor nee Govan [Margaret McGregor, Roslyn]  (No. 3)

Land designation; part allotment 6, Block 1, Township of Roslyn.  Address: No. 17 Lawson Street. Age in 1893: 62 years.

Margaret Govan was born in Anderston, Glasgow, in 1831. Her parents were Ann Finlay and James Govan. Before her marriage, she was a nursemaid. In 1855 she married John McGregor, a calico printer, born near Glasgow about 1831. They emigrated with their young family on the Zambia in 1862. Following a stint at the diggings, John set up a photographic business in Dunedin in 1862, using engraving and photographic skills gained in Glasgow. The only other professional photographer in town at the time was William Meluish, Dunedin’s ‘father of photography’, who had set up his studio in 1860. John McGregor’s sister, Mary Eglin, who also signed Sheet 156, lived a few doors away in Bruce Street. The McGregors’ two young daughters, born in Scotland, died within a day of each other in 1864. The cause was scarlet fever, prevalent at the time. Two more children died in 1868, within days of their births. In 1870 they bought a section in Lawson Street, where they lived out their lives. John died in 1894, and Margaret in 1903, aged 71. They are buried in the Southern Cemetery. The McGregor family occupied the property until 1960.

Obituary: John McGregor. Evening Star, 15 October 1894. (Papers Past)