Mary Frean

Biography contributed by Dr Nicola Francis

Mary Frean was born Mary Jane DUNN on 31 May 1865, in Auckland, New Zealand to Alice BROWN and James DUNN. She was baptised in the Catholic church on 26 June 1865 and grew up near Huntly where her father drowned when she was 15. Her daughter Rhoda told family her mother had an unhappy childhood that was 'better left unsaid'.

On 6 January 1886, in the Auckland Registry Office, Mary married George William FREAN b. 22 Oct 1860, Everton, Lancashire, England, Upholsterer and Barber. Between 1887 and 1902, Mary gave birth to 7 children: George Hender (1887), Rhoda Mary (1888), Alfred William (1890), Alice (1892), Thomas (1894), Agnes Dorothy (c.1898), Frederick Peek (c.1902).

George was a member of the London-based Peek Frean biscuit company but did not want to work in the family business so travelled to New Zealand in 1880. He worked in Auckland as a carpenter and cabinetmaker before moving to Waipū where he worked as an upholsterer and hairdresser.

On 7 August 1888 Mary’s first child George drowned in the Waipū River. He was 16-months-old.

Mary was 28 with 4 children when she signed the Women’s Suffrage Petition in Waipū. The following year, in 1894, the family moved to Whitianga on the Coromandel where George and Mary established a business selling crockery, drapery, footwear, jewellery, hardware and bicycles. George also worked as the town’s barber and photographer. According to their daughter Rhoda’s memoir, her father George spoke fluent te reo Māori. The family lived in a house with no running water, drainage or bathroom. They owned a boat that they used to travel regularly to Pūrangi on the river south of Cooks Beach. They visited Auckland by steamer.

Retaining the Whitianga shop which George and Mary rented out, the family moved to Auckland around 1908. They lived in Pitt Street in central Auckland before moving to 59 Gribblehurst Road (formerly Elizabeth Street), Mt Eden where they enjoyed running water, gas lighting, a wood fire and an ‘earth closet.’ George ran a hairdressing shop in Mt Eden Road, a picture-framing business and later a book exchange.

George died on 21 January 1922 in Auckland after his shop in Whitianga, in which he had invested his life savings, burned to the ground.

Mary died in 1952 and is buried in the Roman Catholic Division of Waikumete Cemetery.

Sources

Births, Deaths and Marriages Online. Te Tari Whenua Internal Affairs, New Zealand Government, Wellington.

Marcus Frean: Ancestors. https://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~marcus/lives.html#MaryJaneDunn Accessed 30 September 2019.

Waipū Museum, The Centre, Waipū, Tai Tokerau Northland, Aotearoa New Zealand