Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Mary Walpole was born about 1834. She married Samuel Augustus Miller in London in 1852 and their daughter Amelia was born in 1854.
The family emigrated to Victoria, Australia later that year on the Joshua and had a further six children.
Amelia died in 1855 followed by the deaths of three more children over the next seven years.
They came to New Zealand in the early 1860s where their next 10 children were born, two of these children also died in infancy while the family was living in Dunedin.
Samuel worked as a builder and the family moved to Lawrence in the early 1870s where his carpentry business also included duties as the undertaker.
When Mary signed the suffrage petition she was running a boarding house and temperance hotel in Lawrence.
She died on 7 September 1898 and Samuel died in 1910, they are buried in the family grave in the Lawrence Cemetery.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
DCC Cemetery Records http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/facilities/cemeteries/cemeteries-search
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
BDM Victoria https://online.justice.vic.gov.au
Public Record Office Victoria https://prov.vic.gov.au