Mrs E. Burns

Karen Shaw Posted: 27 Sep 2025

Eliza Burns (formerly Lester, born Kennard)

Eliza Burns was 59 when she signed the 1893 Suffrage Petition. At that stage, she was a successful business woman who had her own dressmaking shop in King Street in Dunedin.

Eliza was born Eliza Kennard in 1834 in Kent, England. She was the eldest child of William Kennard, an agricultural labourer, and Maria Kennard (born Baker.) It was as a girl of 4, along with her parents and her 2 year old brother William Kennard, that Eliza left England. The Kennards arrived in Sydney, Australia in 1838, along with a new baby who had been born during the voyage, Eliza’s sister Alice.

Two years later, in 1840, the family left Sydney and arrived in NZ, landing on the beach at Waikouaiti north of Dunedin. Initially, Eliza’s father worked for entrepreneur John Jones establishing a farm at nearby Matanaka. Eliza’s parents stayed in the Waikouaiti, Goodwood, area for the rest of their lives and had 12 children in all. They went on to run a small farm and an accommodation house.

In 1852, when she was 18, Eliza Kennard married Thomas Lester and during the 1850s, they had 5 children, although one died in infancy. Sadly, her husband died in 1859, leaving Eliza widowed at 25. In 1861, aged 27, she married again, to Edward Burns. They had a son the following year.

Eliza brought up her own children, one of her granddaughters, and the son of her sister Alice. William Morris aged 5 and his sister Clara aged 8, were sent home from Australia in 1866 due to the death of their mother. While William was raised by Eliza, Clara was raised by her grandmother Maria and appears on Sheet 78 of the petition as Mrs Neil, Goodwood, Otago.

Eliza Kennard/Lester/Burns lived to a great age, dying in 1927 aged 93. She had arrived in NZ the year the Treaty was signed, had raised her children, helped with many other children, and had run her own dressmaking business. She had watched the women around her work alongside the men as they arrived off the ships and settled into a new way of life. It is not surprising then, that she felt strongly about giving women the right to vote.

BDMNZ.
Family History - With Those Who Came First - by Beryl Maultby.
Papers Past.
Electoral Rolls.
Itm.howison.com.
Archives NZ.
Ancestry.

Contributed by the great great granddaughter of Eliza's sister, Alice.

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