suffrage_petition
Surname: 
Burn
Given names: 
M Gordon
Given address: 
Hart St Roslyn
Sheet No: 113
Town/Suburb: 
Roslyn
City/Region: 
Dunedin
Notes: 

A biography of Margaret Gordon Burn is available on the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.

Her daughter Annie McLeod Allan also signed Sheet 113 of the Petition and her sister, Elizabeth Borrows, signed sheet 456.

Biography contributed by Helen Edwards

Margaret Gordon Huie was born in Edinburgh on 22 March 1825, the eldest daughter of Alexander Huie, an accountant, and Eliza Gordon Edgar. She was educated at the well-regarded Circus Place School, and went on to study languages with private tutors. The Circus Place School rector supplied her with a testimonial in 1844, judging her ‘an able, diligent and persevering pupil’. One of her proudest moments was to be part of the events of the Disruption of 1843, when on the 18th of May she accompanied the procession of ministers, who walked out of the Presbyterian Church General Assembly to found the Free Church of Scotland.

She and her sister Agnes took positions as governesses. Margaret had a glowing testimonial dated October 1848 from the wealthy Tod family in West Brackly, Kinross, stating that she was ‘particularly well informed in Geography, History etc. and has very great facility in imparting instruction’. She spent four years with the family of Sir William Jackson in the Manor House, Claughton, Wirral, in Cheshire, returning home when her father was dying. Agnes appears in the 1851 Census of England at the home of William Hay in Ford, Durham.

Her father died in January 1852, and at the end of May her mother boarded the Melbourne, sailing from London to Port Phillip, Victoria. Her eight surviving children, aged between 8 and 26, accompanied her. They would have had a warm welcome when they reached Geelong. Eliza Huie’s brother-in-law, the Rev. John Ziegler Huie*, possibly Australia’s first Free Church of Scotland missionary, had arrived in Geelong in April 1847. He founded a successful Free Scots Church there before ill health forced him to return to Scotland in 1851.

In October 1852 Mrs Huie and her daughters opened a small private school near Geelong for ‘young ladies’, along the lines of the Circus Place School in Edinburgh. At the start of 1858, their school was at Surry Villa in Singapore Terrace, the house where Margaret Huie was married by special licence on 24 December 1857. She was 32 and the bridegroom 26. Her husband, Andrew Burn, was a talented and respected teacher and a kind man. Born in Thurso, Caithness, he was the son of David Haitly Burn and Ann MacLeod. Their three children, David William Murray Burn, Edgar Huie Burn and Annie McLeod Burn, were born between 1858 and 1862.

Late in 1863 she opened her own school, a ‘Ladies College’, with boarding facilities exhibiting ‘scrupulous cleanliness, neatness and comfort’, according to the Rev. T. McK. Fraser, who had examined them. January 1864 editions of the 'Geelong Advertiser' contain advertisements for the Gheringhap Street School where Andrew Burn was headmaster, Mrs Burn’s Ladies’ Select Boarding School at Olrig House in Fenwick Street, and the Misses Huie’s school in Virginia Street, Newtown. The Misses Huie’s advertisements, which first appeared in 1852, ceased in February 1864. The driving force of the establishment had gone elsewhere.

Andrew Burn became very ill and in June 1864 was removed from his post, his managers expressing their sorrow at his ‘serious and lasting illness’ at their annual meeting in October. He returned to Edinburgh for treatment, which was unsuccessful, and became a patient at the Royal Asylum in Morningside, where he died in 1892. In December 1865 Mrs Burn’s ‘Ladies College’ expanded into the elegant 21-room bluestone Treasury Buildings in Gheringhap Street. Mrs Huie died in Geelong in July 1869, at the age of 68.

Early in 1870 Mrs Burn applied for the position of principal of the proposed girls high school in Otago, the first public secondary school for girls in the Southern Hemisphere. The Otago Education Board wanted an unmarried woman or a widow. Mrs Burn was neither. Her excellent references secured the position from a strong pool of 28 applicants. She kept a few, written by ministers who had supported her in Geelong. The Otago Education Board’s letter of 10 June 1870 announced her unanimous election ‘to the Office of (First) Lady Principal of the Otago Girls’ Seminary about to be established in Dunedin’, with a salary of £250 per annum, plus the fees paid by the boarders. The Geelong Advertiser congratulated her, but regretted the loss to their own community.

Mrs Burn arranged successors for her school, and left in September. Her departure ceremony was an emotional one, in which she expressed feelings ‘of the deepest regret that she was going away to another colony’ and acknowledged it was ‘her ill-health that compelled her to seek strength in another clime’. Her health was to require her to take periods of sick leave on several occasions during her career.

She left Melbourne on the steamship Gothenburg on 20 December 1870, with Edgar (12), David (10) and Annie (8). Her sister Bessie (Elizabeth McKenzie) arrived in early March on the ‘Tararua’, to become the ‘resident governess’ at Otago Girls’ High School. An Evening Star obituary sums up Mrs Burn’s early days. ‘The sceptical quickly learned that the school was in the hands not only of an exceptionally able teacher and organiser but a lady of more than ordinary business capacity.’ She also taught all the French lessons. In 1873 she had ten members of staff, both full and part time.

Her first period of sick leave took her to Victoria for three months in the middle of 1874. In her Annual Report at the December prizegiving, she acknowledged the assistance provided during ‘an enforced absence from the Colony’ and thanked the Board for granting her an additional teacher, for teaching French. Her sister Agnes Huie joined the teaching staff in 1875 to take up the role.

Mrs Burn gave up responsibility for the boarding establishment in 1876, but in July the following year she resigned, saying that the work was beyond her strength. The Board believed there were no teachers in the colonies who could replace her. At the time, local papers were reporting tensions in both the boys’ and girls’ high schools, and one source of unease was staff appointments at O.G.H.S. Since the early 1850s, Mrs Burn had run her schools with the assistance of her sisters, but this was now being called nepotism. Following a Commission of Enquiry, she was offered a salary increase and persuaded to stay, but asked to manage the Boarding Establishment and exclude all relatives from appointment. Agnes was given six months’ salary in lieu of notice.

One result of the furore was the establishment of a Board of Governors to manage the two high schools, with the Rev. Dr D. M. Stuart as Chair. With the introduction of Provincial Scholarships, Mrs Burn brought Latin into the curriculum and announced her decision to use subject specialists instead of class teachers. As the school grew in numbers some dormitories became classrooms, and the boarding establishment went into recess. Ex-pupils were sought after as teachers around the country. In 1883 she took another period of sick leave and in May 1884 was advised by her doctor to resign. The Board of Governors accepted her resignation and gave her a year’s salaried leave.

However, her absence from a busy, timetabled regime was not long-lasting. In September 1887 she was appointed principal to the new Waitaki Girls’ High School in Oamaru. A letter from the Board of Governors, dated 4 October, informed her that the Custom House buildings originally selected for the school had been replaced by the Waitaki County Council Chambers. They wished the school to open on 17 October if possible, without an assistant for the first term. Once more, Mrs Burn rose to the challenge. Her difficulties were acknowledged at the 1889 prizegiving, when the gathering was told that ‘there was no question but that Mrs Burn was the right woman in the right place and she deserved every credit for the able way she had overcome the many obstacles she had to meet at the outset’.

In September 1892 both Mrs Burn and her assistant submitted their resignations, Mrs Burn stating ‘it is my purpose to retire from public school teaching at the end of the current year’. She left in December ‘with regret’, but had worded her resignation letter carefully. Despite being 67 years old, she had no intention of giving up teaching, and continued to give private tuition during her retirement years.

She returned to Dunedin and to her own home, where she lived with Annie, married to Richard Sutcliffe Allan, and her family. In 1884, Edgar had bought a property in Hart Street, Roslyn, for £240, and he began his married life there in 1886. In 1891, when he and his mother were both living in Oamaru, he sold the house to her. In her 1914 will she bequeathed the property to her daughter Annie for her lifetime, and when Annie died in 1928 the house was sold after 44 years in the Burn family. Originally numbered 19 Hart Street, it has been No. 21 since 1928. The exterior of the house was refurbished by Mandeno and Fraser in the 1930s with new windows and Moeraki pebbledash. The villa beneath the façade is, in all likelihood, the house where Margaret Gordon Burn spent some of her later years.

Her time at Hart Street was spent in compatible society; one neighbour had also been present at the 1843 Disruption, and another was the executor of her will. Further along the road lived the Rev. James Chisholm, a good companion for a theological discussion, though her spiritual home was Knox Church and the Rev. Dr Stuart a good friend. With her reputation, Mrs Burn was in a position to encourage her friends and neighbours to sign the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition. Thirteen women living in Hart Street’s twelve households added their signatures. She signed the petition as she signed her letters, ‘M. Gordon Burn’, and Annie added her name below. Her sister Mrs Bessie Borrows, who lived a block away, and daughter-in-law Alice Meredith Burn, married to her son David, also signed. Alice, a campaigner for women’s rights, was studying at Canterbury College in Christchurch at the time. She left New Zealand about 1903, became a doctor and spent the rest of her life in the U.K., dying in 1949 in Bangor, Northern Ireland.

From 1911 until 1918 Mrs Burn appeared in electoral rolls, living with Edgar and his second wife, Ann Jane Allan, in South Otago. She also spent time with other family members, and retained her faculties until very late in life. She returned to Hart Street, and Annie’s care, and died at her home on 8 December 1918, during the influenza epidemic. At the time of her death, both her sons were headmasters, Edgar at Romahapa School and David at Glenomaru.

Mrs Burn’s role as foundation principal at Otago Girls’ High School is well known, but it is only part of a rare achievement—between 1852 and 1887 she established four schools for girls. Acknowledgement of her gifts and successes followed her throughout her career. The Rev. D. M. Stuart knew her very well. In her he saw ‘great ability & unwearied zeal’, resulting in her ‘chief place’ in New Zealand’s teaching profession. ‘Above all things,’ he wrote, ‘Mrs Burn is an educator’.

*Two of John Ziegler Huie’s children, Robert and Marjory Huie, came to Dunedin, where they became well-known teachers and remained for the rest of their lives.

Sources

Ancestry.com
Burn, Margaret Gordon: Papers. PC-0267, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago Library, Dunedin
Fraser, T McKenzie. [Letter from Rev. T. McK. Fraser to Mrs Burn.] Geelong, 22 December 1866. In Burn, Margaret Gordon: Papers. PC-0267
Geneanet. https://gw.geneanet.org>zandy51> n=meredith
High Church [annual general meeting of the High Church Gheringham-street], Geelong Advertiser, 12 October 1864
Obituary: the late Mrs M. G. Burn. Evening Star, Dunedin, 9 December 1918
Otago Land Deeds. Archives New Zealand, Te Rua Mahara O Te Kawanatanga. Dunedin Office
Papers Past. paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Smallfield, Jane. Margaret Burn (née Huie), first principal of Otago Girls’ High School. Newsletter. Otago Girls High School Alumni Association, No. 3, Sept. 2014
Stuart, Donald McNaughton. [Testimonial] 9 October 1978. In Burn, Margaret Gordon: Papers. PC-0267
Trove. trove.nla.gov.au
Victoria Inward Passenger Lists, 1839-1923
Victoria Outwards Passenger Lists, 1852-1915
Wallis, Eileen. A most rare vision: Otago Girls’ High School—the first one hundred and twenty-five years. Dunedin, Otago Girls’ High School Board of Trustees, 1995

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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