E F. Wells

Signed family name

Wells

Signed given name

E F.

Given address

Gladstone

Sheet number

340

Town/Suburb

Invercargill

City/Region

Southland

Notes

Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley

Emily Fanny Cooper was born in 1860 in Gloucestershire, England – the daughter of Henry Cooper, a wheelwright, and Emma Owen. (See 340 Emma Cooper)

She emigrated to New Zealand with her family in the early 1870s and she married Robert William Featherstone Wells, a carter, in 1879.

They had three children and when Emily signed the suffrage petition the family were living in Gladstone in Invercargill.

In 1902 Emily charged Robert with 'failing to provide her with adequate means of maintenance.'

They had been living at Preservation Inlet when Robert, who was travelling to Invercargill to sell his patent shears, was staying in a boarding house belonging to widow Lily Scott.

Lily was declared insolvent & the newspaper report on her case mentioned Robert saying 'the relations between Wells and the debtor called for explanation.'

A warrant was issued for Robert’s arrest 'patentee of Wells’s sheep shears, and is said to be accompanied by a widow named Lily Scott.'

He apparently left the country for a time and he was arrested in 1905 for wife desertion. He was arrested again the following year for disobeying a maintenance order.

Robert died in 1911 in Balclutha and that year Emily married Charles James Callaghan, a labourer.

Emily died in Dunedin Hospital on 19 July 1930 – she collapsed after an operation and died soon after.

Charles died in 1937, he is buried with Emily in the St Johns Cemetery, Invercargill.