Originally transcribed as Mrs R Pelling Jnr
Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Jessie McColl was born about 1827. She married Richard Pilling, a miner, in Victoria, Australia in 1856 and they had four children.
Richard came to Otago when the Gabriels Gully gold rush started and sent for the family in 1865 who sailed on the Hero.
hey lived for a time at Waipori where Richard was a storekeeper before he returned to mining.
When two of their sons purchased the Tuapeka Times in 1882 Richard and Jessie moved to Lawrence where Jessie signed the suffrage petition.
Jessie died on 31 January 1903, she 'was of a quiet and retiring nature' and she had been 'a Methodist practically for the whole of her life'.
Richard died in 1906, they are buried in the family grave in the Lawrence Cemetery.
Sources
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org
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
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