Biography contributed by Bernadette Siebert
Violet Jane Campbell was born in 1875 in NZ, one of the ten children of Alexander and Susan nee Dodd. Alexander was from Ayrshire, Scotland and was the Matakana school teacher, the postmaster and rate collector, and later the headmaster of Warkworth School for many years.
When Violet was an adult, she became an attendant at the Mental Asylum in Avondale, Auckland, where she worked from 1899 for about 20 years. Violet married Frank Wright in 1921, when she was 46-years-old. Frank was a 40-year-old salesman from Wellington, one of eleven children of Charles and Sarah Maria Wright. The newspaper reported, 'A very pleasant and quiet little ceremony took place in St. Andrews' Church on the occasion of the marriage of Mr Frank Wright, of Wellington, to Miss Violet Campbell, daughter of Mrs Alec Campbell, of Matakana… The bride was given away by her brother, Mr Kirkwood Campbell. The party adjourned to Mrs E. Sinclair's for the wedding breakfast, after which, the bride and bridegroom-left by motor en route for their future home in Remuera'.
Violet and Frank joined their surnames together and both were thereafter known as Campbell-Wright. They lived at Tawera Road, Greenlane, Auckland all their married lives, where Frank worked as a warehouseman and salesman. Violet died in 1947, intestate, and as there were no children, her estate of 650 pounds all went to Frank. She was buried in the Hillsborough Cemetery. In part, her headstone reads, 'A gracious personality.'
Frank lived on until 1962. In his will, he left 400 pounds to his housekeeper Mrs Anna Botterill as long as she remain his housekeeper and unmarried, and most of his estate to all the blood nieces and nephews of his late wife and himself.
Sources
Historical BDMs
https://www.localmatters.co.nz/history/matakana-settler/
PAPERS PAST Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 6 April 1921, Page 2
NZ Electoral Rolls (ancestry.com)