suffrage_petition
Surname: 
Gilbert
Given names: 
Helen
Given address: 
Church St
Sheet No: 125
Town/Suburb: 
Kaikorai
City/Region: 
Dunedin
Notes: 

Biography contributed by Helen Edwards.

Helen (Ellen) Ball, born in Glasgow about 1868, was the daughter of John Ball and Margaret Meikle. John, a 29 year-old labourer, his wife Margaret and 5 year-old Helen boarded the Otago in Glasgow in January 1873 for their voyage to Otago. Helen married Alexander Gilbert at Knox Church, Dunedin, on 15 April 1892, at the age of 24. She became his second wife, his first wife having died in 1891. He was a painter, born in Glasgow on 21 September 1863, the son of Henry and Helen Rule Gilbert (née Robertson). In 1879, Alexander’s widowed mother, a cook, ostensibly 44 years old*, brought five children to Otago on the Taranaki, including Alexander (15), a farm labourer, and 23 year-old Jobina, who lived with them in Church Street (now Nairn Street). Jobina also signed the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition. Alexander was 38 when he died in 1901, the year their fifth child was born. Ellen Gilbert (née Ball) died in 1954, aged 86. Alexander and Ellen are buried in Dunedin’s Southern Cemetery. Ellen also signed Sheet 98 of the 1892 Women’s Suffrage Petition Roll.

*Helen Rule Gilbert was born in 1827, making her over 50 in 1879. When she arrived in Otago she was reunited with her parents, Charles and Helen Robertson, and some of her siblings, who had immigrated on the Larkins in 1849. Helen died in 1913 and is buried with her parents in Dunedin’s Southern Cemetery. Her sister-in-law, Wilhelmina Robertson, signed Sheet 124.

Main sources

Ancestry.com
Births death & marriages online. Dept. of Internal Affairs
Cemeteries search. Dunedin City Council
Electoral rolls on microfiche and ancestry.com
Knox Church, Dunedin. Presbyterian church marriage registers : Knox Church, Dunedin, 1860-1920 [prepared by] Eleanor Leckie, 1988.
Otago and Southland assisted passengers (OSAP) 1872-1882. Toitu Otago Settlers Museum/Dunedin Family History Group.
Stone’s Otago and Southland commercial, municipal and general directory … Dunedin: Stone & Co., 1884-

Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.

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