suffrage_petition
Surname: 
Birtles
Given names: 
Sarah
Given address: 
Church Street
Sheet No: 94
Town/Suburb: 
Roslyn
City/Region: 
Dunedin
Notes: 

Biography contributed by Helen Edwards

Sarah McNeil was born in Ireland about 1858, and probably emigrated aboard the Wellington from Gravesend in 1882 as a 24 year-old domestic servant. She married Alfred Birtles on 25 September 1885 in the Green Island Presbyterian Church. The index lists them both as 24 years old. Alfred was a fellmonger and wool classer, born in Dunedin in 1860. His parents were Mary Jones and Peter Birtles, who were born and married in England, emigrating about 1852. Peter Birtles was the publican at the White Swamp Hotel, on the West Taieri Road, during the mid-1860s. Sarah Birtles had four children between 1886 and 1892, two girls and two boys. Sarah and Alfred lived at Church Street (now Nairn Street) between about 1890 and 1894. In 1897, when their son Alfred died, they were living in Halfway Bush, Dunedin. By 1917 they were at 13 Jellicoe Crescent, Kaikorai, and were still living there when Alfred died, aged 65, in 1926. Sarah’s address was 21 Hastings Street, Wakari, when she died on 5 February 1940, aged 82. They are buried together in Dunedin’s Southern Cemetery.

Main sources

Births death & marriages online. Dept. of Internal Affairs
Cemeteries search. Dunedin City Council
Electoral rolls on microfiche and ancestry.com
Otago & part Southland, New Zealand: Presbyterian marriages at Hewitson Library, Knox College, Arden Street,Dunedin, New Zealand : index to brides & grooms, 1848-1920. [Compiled 1990] by Eleanor Leckie and Janice Nolan.
OASES. Toitu Otago Settlers’ Museum
Otago and Southland assisted passengers (OSAP) 1872-1882. Toitu Otago Settlers Museum/Dunedin Family History Group.
Otago Nominal Index. Hocken Collections, University of Otago.
Papers Past. National Library of New Zealand
Stone’s Otago and Southland commercial, municipal and general directory … Dunedin: Stone & Co., 1884-

Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.

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