Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Mary Thomson Shore was born on 24 May 1870 in Dalry, Ayrshire, Scotland – the daughter of William Martin Shore, a coal miner, and Margaret McCulley.
Mary emigrated to Otago with her family on the Parsee in 1874. The family settled in Kaitangata in South Otago and Mary attended the Kaitangata School. She was appointed as a pupil teacher at Kaitangata in 1886 - and when she signed the suffrage petition she gave her address as Waiwera South.
She resigned her post at the Waiwera School in 1898 and married Rev John Chapman Jamieson on 5 April 1899 at her parent’s house in Kaitangata. They had no children and lived in Middlemarch in Central Otago. After her marriage Mary continued to work as a teacher.
She died at her father’s house in Kaitangata on 23 April 1901 at the age of 30 and is buried in the Kaitangata Northern Cemetery. John continued to work for the church and in the 1920s he moved to Australia. He re-married in New South Wales in 1906 and died in Victoria in 1955.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
BDM Victoria https://online.justice.vic.gov.au
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au
NSW Government https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au
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