Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Christiana Gotze was born about 1831 in Hamburg, Germany.
She married Thomas Johnson Thompson, a shipwright and mariner, in 1853 in Victoria, Australia.
They had four children in Victoria, one who died in infancy, before the family went to live in Fiji for several years where their next two children appear to have been born.
In the early 1860s the family returned to Melbourne before sailing for New Zealand in Thomas’ schooner Christiana, arriving in Invercargill in 1863.
Their last four children were born there – in 1877 they moved to Bluff where Thomas worked as a marine surveyor.
In 1886 Thomas, 'while on a visit to Australia was lost in the wreck of the Ly-ce-moon” (when no fewer than eighty persons were drowned) and never heard of again.'
Christiana was still living in Bluff when she signed the suffrage petition.
She died at her home on 3 October 1913 and is buried with two of her children in the Bluff Cemetery.
Her obituary said she was 'most kindly disposed and had no little reputation as a “first aid” doctor, as many of the older Bluff residents can testify.'
Sources
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Invercargill City Council https://icc.govt.nz
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