Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley.
Amelia Parkin was born in Cornwall, England in 1852 – the daughter of John Parkin, a miner and Mary Roberts.
She married William Gilbert, a miner, in 1874 – later that year they emigrated to Canterbury on the Eastern Monarch.
Their son Samuel was born in 1875, William disappears from the records after this time.
Amelia had a further two sons with her new partner Thomas Dobbie, a sewing machine engineer in the 1880’s.
Thomas was declared insolvent in 1882 while the family was living in George St, Dunedin and the following year he received a four-year prison sentence for larceny.
When Amelia signed the suffrage petition the family was still living in George St and she was working as a dressmaker.
Amelia died on 8 March 1918, she was described as a widow. She is buried in the Southern Cemetery.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
DCC Cemetery Records http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/facilities/cemeteries/cemeteries-search
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org
Free BDM https://www.freebmd.org.uk
GRO England https://www.gro.gov.uk
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz