Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Emma Catherine Godfrey was born in 1862 in Marlborough – the daughter of Henry Godfrey, a farmer, and Eliza Jane Harley.
In August 1868, over a two week period, three of Emma’s siblings and her father died from diphtheria.
Her mother re-married in 1878 to Evan Prichard and Emma married Evan’s son Evan Llewellyn Prichard, a chemist, in 1883.
Emma and Evan had five children - in 1891 Evan was declared bankrupt and the family moved to Ashburton where Emma signed the suffrage petition.
In 1893 Evan died from an overdose of prussic acid taken to relieve the effects of alcohol as he had been 'drinking hard'.
Evan is buried in the Ashburton Cemetery.
Emma re-married in 1895 to James Roland Colyer, the clerk in the Ashburton Magistrate’s Court, whose wife (See 282 E J Colyer) had died in childbirth and left him with 10 children.
Emma and James had a further six children - the family moved to Invercargill in the late 1890s.
James died in 1915 when their youngest child was eight-years-old, he is buried with his first wife in the Ashburton Cemetery.
Emma then lived in Dunedin & in Blenheim where she died on 28 April 1934, she is buried in the Omaka Cemetery, Blenheim.
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
Find a Grave https://www.findagrave.com/
Ashburton District Council https://infoservices.adc.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.
Community contributions