Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Margaret Bell was born 1862 in Canada – the daughter of Coll Campbell Archibald Bell and Jeanette Yuill.
She arrived in Otago with her family in 1864 on the Aboukir and they settled in Southland.
Margaret married William Drake, a fisherman, in 1882 and they had 10 children.
The family lived, at first, in Dunedin before moving to Bluff where Margaret signed the suffrage petition.
In 1895 their four roomed house caught fire at 1am. Their four-year-old daughter Sophia died and Margaret was 'so severely injured in recovering the other members of the family that she had to be removed to the Invercargill Hospital.'
William died in 1937 and Margaret died on 26 June 1941, they are buried in the family grave in the Bluff Cemetery.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Invercargill City Council https://icc.govt.nz
Find a Grave https://www.findagrave.com/
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