Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley.
Helen Johnston Kay was born on December 27th 1848 in Barry, Angus, Scotland, the daughter of Andrew Kay, a shoemaker, and Margaret Coquhoun.
She emigrated to Otago with her family in 1858 on the Stately. They lived at first in Dunedin.
Helen “went to a private school, taught by Miss Patterson, at the corner of Hope and Carroll streets” until the family moved to the Taieri where they bought a farm.
About five years later they moved again, this time to a farm near Milton.
She “remembered well the excitement occasioned by the discovery of gold in Gabriel’s Gully, and entertained a most favourable opinion of the character of the men who flocked to the goldfields”.
Helen married Henry Carnie on December 26th 1871 at Carnie’s Hill, Switzers (now Waikaia in Southland). They had eight children and by 1880 they had moved to Dunedin, where Henry worked as a carter.
The family lived in Russell Street where Helen signed the suffrage petition and where she lived for the rest of her life.
Henry died at their home in 1908 and Helen died on February 16th, 1935. She is buried with Henry in the Northern Cemetery.
Her obituary said she was “a pioneer of excellent character, whose memories of eighty years ago were of great value to the new generation”.
Sources
Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.
Community contributions