Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Helen Farquhar was born about 1843 in Aberdeen, Scotland, she emigrated to Otago in the early 1860s and married James Murdoch, a stonemason, on 19 October 1863 in Dunedin.
They had nine children when James died in 1890. He was working at a quarry letting off a blast when he fell 40 feet off a cliff sustaining fatal injuries.
When Helen signed the suffrage petition she was living with some of her children in Hanover St, Dunedin.
She died at her daughter’s home in Christchurch on 5 May 1916 and is buried in the family grave in the Northern Cemetery.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
DCC Cemetery Records http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/facilities/cemeteries/cemeteries-search
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz