suffrage_petition
Surname: 
Pole
Given names: 
Annie
Given address: 
Albany St
Sheet No: 169
Town/Suburb: 
Central Dunedin
City/Region: 
Dunedin
Notes: 

Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley.

Annie Allen was born in 1858 in Leicestershire, England.

She came to New Zealand & she married John Smalley Pole, a carpenter, in Dunedin in 1882.

They had 6 children & when Annie signed the suffrage petition the family were living in Albany Street.

John worked on the building of Lanarch’s Castle on the Otago Peninsula &, at times, he had to travel as far away as Westport to find work.

In 1894 the family moved to Palmerston North & they later moved to Otaki where Annie died on March 17th 1933.

John died at their daughter’s home in 1939, they are buried together in the Otaki Cemetery.

Sources

BDM online NZ

Family Search

Otago Nominal Index

Papers Past

Find a Grave

Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.

Community contributions

2 comments have been posted about Annie Pole

What do you know?

Donna Patrick,

Posted: 04 Mar 2022

Whoops. Annie actually born into a rural, Leicestershire, working class family on 26 February 1856. Times were hard. Framework knitting was in decline. However, her village was adjacent to coal fields, so there was work. When Annie was 12yrs old, she left home to work as a nursemaid. 1871 census records her as a Nurse at Field House school, (Nanny to headmaster's children), in Belgrave. Belgrave was then a village on the outskirts of Leicester and the Pole's, a highly literate working family had been established there for decades. Hence Annie met Johnny. The 1881 census records Annie at Knighton, Leicester, as a Nurse, (nanny), to the Clarke family. Annie married Johnny in Dunedin 3 January 1882, having journeyed on her own from England. Education mattered enormously to Annie and there was enormous pressure on her children to achieve, something she passed onto her daughter, May, (Mabel). I have great admiration for Annie's mother Betsy, (Elizabeth), Allen nee Hincks. When her husband was imprisoned for a time, she kept herself and her 2 young sons out of the workhouse by her frame work knitting. This action reverberated down the ages: 'You must be educated. You must be trained in something'. Sources: Mabel St Clair Pole, (Anderson)1886-1969/ Leicester County Record Office/ Censuses and some criminal records,(others from LRCO), from Ancestry.co.uk

donna patrick

Posted: 04 Mar 2022

Annie Pole was born in 1855, not 1858, (she substracted years from her age). I have copies of her baptism entry, her marriage certificate, her death certificate and numerous photographs, (I currently have her photograph album).