C. Hurley

Surname:

Hurley

Given names:

Given address:

Castle St

Sheet No: 148

Town/Suburb:

Central Dunedin

City/Region:

Dunedin

Notes:

Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley

Clara Hannah Hillsdon was born in Tring, Hertfordshire, England in 1852 – the daughter of John Hillsdon and Ann Cato.

The family came to New Zealand in the early 1860s and settled in Hokitika where Clara’s father worked as an engineer and machinist at the Westland Saw Mills.

Around this time the family’s name changed to Hutton.

In 1870 Clara’s parents, accompanied by the younger members of the family, sailed for California on the Zephyr.

In 1872 Clara gave birth to her first child in Victoria, Australia with Robert Stewart Park.

She travelled back to Kumara on the West Coast where their next three children were born.

In 1880, when her youngest child was three-years-old, Clara appears to have left Robert and the children to marry Charles William Hurley, a tram inspector.

They had a daughter the following year before Charles died in January 1883 in Dunedin – he is buried in the Northern Cemetery.

Their daughter appears to have been brought up by Charles’ family.

Clara married Robert Park, the father of her older children, in December of 1883, and they had another two children before they parted company again.

By 1889 Clara was living in Dunedin and she was, once again, using the name Hurley.

Around this time she had two sons and when she signed the suffrage petition she was living in Castle Street working as a dressmaker.

She remained in Dunedin until the 1910s when she moved to Wellington.

She died there on 23 February 1935 and was cremated at the Karori Cemetery.