Blanche Burgess

Biography and image contributed by Robyn Burgess (great-granddaughter), based on research by Jeff Burgess (grandson).

Blanche Burgess (nee Dixon) was born in Wellington in 1870.  Her parents were English-born Sam Dixon (1840-1917) and New Zealand-born Maria (Mary) Brightwell (1848-1917) who had married in Masterton, New Zealand on 25 June 1864. 

Sam and Mary Dixon had eight children – Edith (1865), Cecelia (1866), Horace (1868), Blanche (1870), Bertha (1872), Clarice (1877), France (1882) and Claude (1888).  By 1880 the Dixons had moved to Hawera and it was there that Blanche married carpenter, George Burgess, on 19 April 1892.  Blanche and George shifted to nearby Stratford where they had their eight children – Gwendoline (1893), Gertrude (1894), Reginald (1898), Roy (1900), Albert (1902), Cecil (1906), Leonard (1908) and Doreen (1911).  In 1921 the couple moved to New Plymouth, where they remained for the rest of their lives.

The 1893 Suffrage Petition shows the signature of Blanche Burgess, Hawera, immediately below that of her mother, Maria Jane Dixon, Hawera. 

A newspaper item in 1952 celebrating Blanche and George’s 60th wedding anniversary recorded that Blanche was the daughter of old Hawera residents, the late Mr and Mrs S. Dixon.  Her mother was ‘a colonial’ and her father had arrived in New Zealand at the age of 17 years from Sheffield, England.  Blanche and her parents had been well known members of the Hawera Choral Society and Methodist choir. The item went on to note that since her marriage, ‘Mrs Burgess has had her time occupied by her home and family’.  

Blanche died in 1959, aged 88, and is buried in Te Henui Cemetery, New Plymouth.

Blanche Burgess, c 1905.