suffrage_petition
Surname: 
Millar
Given names: 
Sarah Lillian
Given address: 
Roslyn
Sheet No: 156
Town/Suburb: 
Roslyn
City/Region: 
Dunedin
Notes: 

Notes provided by Helen Edwards, who has carried out extensive research on the women who signed Sheet 156, including mapping where signatories lived. Download pdf of this research here.

Sarah Lillian Millar, nee Ross [Sarah Lillian Millar, Roslyn] (No. 4)

Address: Bruce Street (renting, most likely at 32 Bruce Street).  Age in 1893: 34 years. Religious denomination: Anglican

Sarah Lillian Ross, the daughter of James and Eleanor Ross, of Lisnaskea, Northern Ireland, was born about 1859. In 1882, she married John Andrew Millar, in Wellington. John was born in 1855 in the Punjab, India, where his father, John Craufurd Millar, was a lieutenant in the British Army. He arrived in New Zealand in 1870, on the James Nicol Fleming and began a career as a seaman. In 1887 he was elected the first fulltime general secretary of the Federated Seamen’s Union of New Zealand. He helped to establish the Tailoresses’ Union of New Zealand, the first trade union for women, and took office as its first secretary in 1889. Our annual Labour Day holiday is partly due to his work. His election to the Chalmers seat in 1893 was the start of 21 years in parliament, which included ministerial posts in labour, marine, customs and railways. One of his many interests was the Dunedin Free Kindergarten Association. He died in Auckland in 1915.

The Millars moved to Dunedin about 1887 with two children and another was born in 1891. In the First World War, Hawthorne McKenzie Millar, an engineer, served with the Divisional Signals Company, and Harold James Millar as a trooper in the Otago Mounted Rifles. Sarah was living in Bruce Street, Roslyn, in 1893, when she signed the petition. They moved to 21 High Street, Roslyn, just north of the Roslyn Presbyterian Church, where she died after a short illness in 1906, aged 47. Her funeral was attended by the Premier, the Hon. Sir J. G. Ward. In a sad little turn of events, Elsie Kettle (No. 16), a neighbour of the Millars, lost her two year-old daughter on the day of Mrs Millar’s funeral.

Roth, Herbert. Millar, John Andrew, 1855–1915, Seaman, trade union leader, politician. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Volume 2, 1993. (Dictionary of New Zealand Biography).

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

No comments have been posted about Sarah Lillian Millar

What do you know?