M. D. Park

Notes provided by Helen Edwards, who has carried out extensive research on the women who signed Sheet 156. The original text has been updated based on information supplied by Stuart Park - see his community contributions below.

Margaret Dunbar Park, nee Ross [M. D. Park, Roslyn] (No. 40)

Land description: Part section 8, Block 5, Township of Roslyn. Address: Leven Street. Age in 1893: 34 years.

Margaret, known as Metta by her family, was born in Dunedin on 4 October 1859, probably at Bellknowes House in the Bellevue area. She was the daughter of George Ross and Margaret, nee Marshall, who were married in Dunedin in 1856. George Ross arrived on the Philip Laing in 1848 and Margaret immigrated with her parents on the Cornwall in 1849. A son, George, was born in 1857, and Margaret in 1859. George Ross senior died after a short illness in January 1860, when Margaret was three months old, and her mother took legal action against James Kilgour, her late husband’s business partner.

In 1863 her mother married William Hepburn and Margaret grew up with extended family in Halfway Bush. A return of the freeholders of New Zealand October 1882 lists her property, held in trust, as valued at £18,625. She married James Alexander Park at the Hepburn home, Athelstane, in 1880. James was the son of Christina and John Brown Park, famed first headmaster of High Street School, known at the time as Park’s School. James came to Dunedin via Tasmania in 1863. He was a member of two well-known Dunedin business firms, McLandress, Hepburn and Co., and Park, Reynolds & Co., and mayor of Dunedin in 1902. Margaret and James had ten daughters and two sons between 1880 and 1898 and named their last child Jessie Decima. Their younger son, Douglas Mungall Park, was killed in action in France in 1916. They lived in Leven Street, probably in James Kilgour’s house. Margaret’s mother, Margaret Hepburn, lived on the same property. In 1896 the Park’s house burned down and they were forced to move elsewhere in Roslyn. Their final move was to Queen’s Drive, St Kilda, when they died; James in 1928, aged 74 and Margaret in 1929, at the age of 69. They are buried in the Southern Cemetery. Margaret’s mother, Margaret Hepburn, also signed Sheet 156, and her sister-in-law, Jane Somerville Park, nee Rutherford, living in Bruce Street, signed Sheet 108.

A Return of the freeholders of New Zealand : giving the names, addresses and occupations of owners of land, together with the area and value in counties, and the value in boroughs and town districts, October 1882, compiled from the assessment rolls of the Property-Tax Department. Wellington, Government Printer, 1884.