M. A. Burrows

Signed family name

Burrows

Signed given name

M. A.

Given address

Gore

Sheet number

109

Town/Suburb

Gore

City/Region

Southland

Notes

Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley

also signed as 103 M A Burrows

Mary Ann Booth was born about 1844 in Colchester, Essex.

She married gardener Nathan Joseph Burrows in 1863 in Colchester and they had five children.

Shortly after their marriage they moved to London where Nathan worked at an experimental plant nursery on Wandsworth Common.

In 1874, for health reasons, the family sailed for Otago on the Tweed and they settled on the Waimea Plains near Invercargill.

Their youngest son died shortly after their arrival and one more child was born in 1876.

In 1883 they moved to Clarendon, near Milton, where Nathan died suddenly in 1886 from “the rupture of a blood vessel”. He is buried in the Fairfax Cemetery, Milton.

By the following year Mary had moved to Jacobstown near Gore where she was advertising “accommodation for one or two Gentlemen Boarders” and where she signed the suffrage petition. She died on 30 July 1940 and she is buried in the Gore Cemetery.

Her obituary said she was “one of the oldest identities of Eastern Southland”, she “did not take an active part in outside affairs, her main interest being in her home and the Congregational Church of which she was a foundation member at Gore”.