Biographical information provided by Jenny Robertson for the He Tohu exhibition:
Margaret Isabella Anderson was born 29 January 1841 in Colchester, Essex, England to Walter Anderson, a mason plasterer and Mary Cork, who had married in Ashford Kent in 1817. Mary died after 1851 and in 1855 Walter, widower, then about 66 and Margaret, 14 migrated to Australia on the Asiatic. She was sponsored by sister-in-law Louisa Anderson who contributed £5 to the cost of her assisted passage.
In Sydney Margaret married musician John Oaten in 1864. She had several children in NSW and Victoria but of these, only sons John Walter Oaten, born 1865 and Claude Herbert Oaten, born in 1867, survived infancy.
By 1875 they were living at 17 Charlotte Lane in Sydney. The family came to New Zealand around 1876 and expanded with the birth of Frederica Elizabeth Helen Oaten in 1877 and Robert Sydney Oaten in 1879. The family income was earned in part from solo concert performances by John Oaten who styled himself as ‘champion concertina player of the Southern Hemisphere’. He also worked as a clerk.
The children attended Normal School in George St and Arthur St School and the family lived for a time in Lawrence as well as at different Dunedin addresses – Hanover St, Filleul St, King St and Cumberland St.
John Oaten died in 1887 so Margaret would have been a widow when she signed the 1893 suffrage petition. She was living in King St when she died (heart failure) on 19 October 1899. Both Oatens are buried with other family members in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery.