Biographical information provided by Fiona Oliver, Alexander Turnbull Library, for the He Tohu exhibition:
Margaret Saunders was born in 1871. She married Charles Puechegud in 1890 and had three daughters.
In 1895 she appeared before the Magistrate’s Court and won a claim against unpaid wages. Money troubles plagued Maggie; three years later her husband placed a public notice in a Dunedin newspaper: ‘I will not be responsible for any Debt contracted by my Wife’.
A Margaret Puechegud is recorded as having died in 1900 – it is likely to be Maggie, rather than her eponymous daughter
Further biographical information contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Margaret Saunders was born in 1871 in New Zealand – the daughter of John Saunders, a mariner, and Mary Rudd. (See 45 Mrs J Saunders)
She grew up in Dunedin and married Charles Henry Desire Puechegud, a poulterer from France in 1890.
They had three daughters and when Margaret signed the suffrage petition the family were living in George St, Dunedin.
Margaret died on 23 March 1900, her youngest daughter was only six-years-old at the time.
She is buried with her parents in the family grave in the Northern Cemetery.
Charles died in 1925, he is buried with one of their daughters in the Andersons Bay Cemetery.
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
DCC Cemetery Records http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/facilities/cemeteries/cemeteries-search
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
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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