Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Margaret Bergin was born about 1830, possibly in Ireland.
She married Peter Connelly in 1858 in Victoria, Australia and they had three children before they sailed for New Zealand.
Peter was a hotelkeeper and they lived, at first, at Upper Shotover then moved to the West Coast.
They had a further four children and they ran the Hokitika Hotel and the Albion Hotel in Kanieri where Peter was declared insolvent in 1876.
After this they moved to the White Swan Hotel in Christchurch where Peter died in 1882.
Margaret and the children moved back to Kanieri and when her daughter married in 1885 she was at the Ballarat Hotel.
Margaret signed the suffrage petition in South Dunedin.
She died at her daughter’s home in Marion St, Caversham on 19 June 1906 and she is buried with Peter in the Barbadoes Street Cemetery, Christchurch.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Find a Grave https://www.findagrave.com/
BDM Victoria https://online.justice.vic.gov.au
Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.
Community contributions