Also signed as 109 M. Richardson
Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Mary Fletcher was born in 1854 in Cockermouth, Cumberlandshire, England – the daughter of John Fletcher, a master butcher, and Jane Brown.
She married gardener Henry Richardson in Cockermouth in 1877 and they had three daughters before they emigrated to Otago in 1882 on the Zealandia.
They lived at Lower Shotover for the first four years before they moved to Invercargill, then to Gore, where Henry established a plant nursery.
When Mary signed the suffrage petition they were living at East Gore.
Henry died in 1916 and Mary died at her daughter’s home in Mataura on 23 October 1932 – they are buried in the family grave in the Gore Cemetery.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org
Free BDM https://www.freebmd.org.uk
GRO England https://www.gro.gov.uk
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz