Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Mary Jane Prior was born in 1855 in Forest Creek, Victoria, Australia – the daughter of Edwin Prior, a farmer, and Annabella Williams.
In the early 1870s she came to Otago with her family and they settled in Queenstown.
Mary married William Mulholland, the master of the steamer Jane Williams, on 4 May 1882 at her parent’s home in Queenstown.
They had nine children - two of their sons died during the First World War.
Later in their married life William worked as a gold miner and a coal miner.
The family lived in Queenstown where Mary signed the suffrage petition and where William died in 1922.
Mary died at her home on 7 February 1936, she is buried with William in the Queenstown Cemetery.
Her obituary said she 'was of a very unassuming and retiring nature, and one possessed of many domestic virtues, chief among which was her devotion to her home and family. She was a gentle and kindly woman, full of wisdom and understanding, and much given to unostentatious hospitality'.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Queenstown Lakes District Council http://cemeteries.qldc.govt.nz/
Presbyterian Research Centre https://www.presbyterian.org.nz/archives/
BDM Victoria https://online.justice.vic.gov.au