Biography contributed by Bernadette Siebert
Emily Seymour was born in 1865 in Auckland, the eldest daughter of early settler and architect Felix Seymour and Jane nee Gibson. In 1892, when Emily was 26, she married William David Currie, in his house in Auckland. William was born in Victoria, Australia in 1869, a son of Scottish born Alexander Currie and his Tasmanian wife Elizabeth nee Green, whose family were also from Scotland. The Currie family came to NZ when William was about nine years.
William and Emily first lived at Vermont Street, Ponsonby where William was a cabinet-maker, and then the family moved to Devonport on Auckland’s north shore where they had six children, with their two sons dying in infancy:
- Wilfred Claude (1894-1894) died aged 4wks
- William Gordon (1895-1896) died aged 9mths
- Thelma Eileen (1897-1986)
- Winnie Muriel (1901-1941)
- Gretta Beryl (1906-1996)
- Mabel Constance (1910-1995)
From about 1912, the family moved to Queen Street, Northcote where William often advertised for a ‘keen young man’ to leave the cabinet-making trade. William built the casket, inlaid with New Zealand woods, presented by the Auckland Harbour Board to the Duke and Duchess of York on their visit to Auckland in 1927. For many years he was a member of the Waitemata Bowling Club and belonged to the U.A.O. Druids.
William died in 1934, aged 64, in Northcote and was buried in the Purewa Cemetery. After his death, Emily and her unmarried daughter Mabel Constance (Connie) moved to Renmark Flats on Jervois Road, Ponsonby. Even when Mabel married a seaman named Benjamin Bryan Hughes, they lived with Emily at Remark Flats. Emily died in 1949 (aged 82y and was buried with William in Purewa Cemetery.
Emily is the daughter-of-law of #382 Elizabeth CURRIE, Edinburgh Street
Sources
- PAPERS PAST New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21940, 25 October 1934, Page 16
- PAPERS PAST Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 166, 14 July 1892, Page 11
- Findagrave
- Historical BDMs
- Electoral Rolls (ancestry.com)