Biography written by Kaye Foran, Mary Smith’s great great granddaughter.
Mary Smith (nee Harty), the daughter of James Harty, a gardener and Ellen McCarty, was born in Cobh, County Cork, Ireland circa 1853. Aged 18, Mary sailed on the Carnatic to New Zealand, arriving in March 1874 in Port Chalmers. Her occupation was listed as servant.
Mary married Joseph Smith, on 5th February 1875, in Tokomairiro, now Milton. Joseph’s obituary records him being born in 1838 in Nantucket, America. At 18, on the whaling ship Franklin, he was shipped wrecked off the coast of Pitt Island in the Chathams before being rescued by the Esther and taken to Wellington. Contemporary records do not record a Joseph Smith born in Nantucket nor as a crew member on the Franklin.
Mary and Joseph had a small farm in Inch Clutha, South Otago but when flooded out by the 1878 floods moved to Wangaloa where Joseph leased about 50 acres of Education Reserve to farm. He also worked several seams of coal, supplying local farmers with fuel.
Mary and Joseph had not been long in Wangaloa, when on 21 February 1879, the lives of 34 miners were lost in an underground explosion in the nearby Kaitangata Mine.
Joseph and Mary had eight children at Wangaloa. In 1893, a Mary Smith of Wangaloa signed the Women's Suffrage Petition. At the time, there were 15 families recorded in Wises Directory living in Wangaloa, with only one Smith family. Mary Smith of Wangaloa is number 2616 on the 1893 Women’s Electoral Roll.
Joseph Smith died 9 December 1912 at Wangaloa. A portrait of him was donated by Mary to the Otago Early Settlers Museum in 1919. Mary saw at least two of her sons enlist during World War 1; Joseph as part of the American Forces and Peter as part of the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces. Both returned from the war. Mary died at the home of her daughter, Margaret Brown, in her 83rd year on 14 February 1936. Joseph and Mary are buried in Kaitangata.
Source information can be found at: https://digitalnz.org/stories/5acd58ed12575724c7ef0ec6