E. B. Kennerley

Biography contributed by Phillip Kennerley (great-great-grandson)

Elizabeth Bennett Briscoe was born in January 1844 in Littleton, Cheshire, the only child of parents in their early forties.

Elizabeth married Joseph Kennerley on her 17th birthday in a wedding ceremony and festivities celebrated by the whole village. Sadly, within just over two years of this joyous event, both parents had died.

Elizabeth’s early life with Joseph was on a farm in nearby Tattenhall, and then, from 1867, in Llangynhafal, Denbighshire. Between October 1861 and October 1875, she gave birth to eight children, one of whom died aged three and is buried in the St Alban’s churchyard, Tattenhall.

In May 1878, having sold his farming assets and the family’s household furniture, Joseph departed for Wellington with their four eldest children, leaving Elizabeth behind with the three youngest aged between two and eight. He returned in August 1879, but was largely committed to touring England and Wales over the next ten months, promoting better prospects in New Zealand for potential migrant farmers.

Elizabeth eventually sailed for Wellington on the St Leonard’s with Joseph and the three children, arriving in Wellington on 22 August 1880. However, the family was reunited with the four older siblings for only a few months before Joseph found work in Auckland that required him to be away from April to December 1881, revisiting the UK.

On his return to Auckland, with an expected appointment as a sheep inspector not having eventuated, Joseph presented a claim to Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee for £610 unreimbursed expenses from his 1879/80 UK visit, which was rejected.

However, after moving back to Wellington in 1882, Joseph was appointed as a sheep inspector in Whanganui, where they relocated to in 1883, settling in Sedgebrook.

Joseph died suddenly and unexpectedly at home in October 1887. The following month, Elizabeth re-submitted Joseph’s petition to the Public Petitions Committee, but it was again declined. Over the next five years, she supported her remaining family by keeping a small herd of dairy cows near Whanganui, firstly in Eastown, and then Castlecliff.

In July 1893, she sold her cows and moved to the corner of Bell and Liverpool Streets in Whanganui, where she died from cancer on 30 August 1893. Sadly, she didn’t get to cast her vote in the historic 1893 election following the successful outcome of the suffrage petition she had signed.

Sources

UK General Register Office: Birth, Death and Marriage records

British Newspapers Online

Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand

Archives New Zealand

Image

Photograph from Phillip Kennerley Family History Collection