Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Emily Moore was born in 1846 in Devonshire, England – the daughter of Thomas Moore, a farmer, and Elizabeth Fry.
She emigrated to Otago with her sister Isabella about 1866 and she married Hugh Bruce, a farmer, in 1871 at Waitahuna- they had no children.
After their marriage they lived at Tuapeka Mouth before moving to Lawrence where Emily signed the suffrage petition.
Hugh died in 1922 and Emily died at the Lawrence Hospital on 6 October 1939.
Her obituary said she 'built up a popular boarding-house business in a large house, since destroyed, at the corner of Campbellton and Whitehaven streets. She is remembered affectionately by her boarders of those days. Ultimately she had to retire owing to ill-health'.
Emily was said to be the oldest member 'in point of age' of the Lawrence Methodist Church.
She is buried with Hugh in the Lawrence Cemetery.
Sources
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org
Free BDM https://www.freebmd.org.uk
GRO England https://www.gro.gov.uk
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Interment.net http://www.interment.net/data/nz/otago/lawrence