Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley.
Emma Ruth Bishop was born in 1856 in Gloucestershire, England – the daughter of James Bishop and Elizabeth Blanchard.
Her father died in 1860 and her mother re-married in 1865.
In 1875 the family emigrated to Timaru on the Duke of Edinburgh.
Emma married Arthur Henry Beaman, a wool broker, in 1884.
They had five children before Arthur left the family early in the 1890’s – he went to Canada with his new “wife” using the name Arthur Vernon and died there in 1940.
When Emma signed the suffrage petition she was living in Selwyn, North East Valley in Dunedin.
She had a further two children around this time and, in the 1911 electoral roll, she was living in Invercargill.
She died there in November 1943 and she is buried in the family grave in the Invercargill Eastern Cemetery.
Sources:
BDM online NZ https://bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
DCC Cemetery Records http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/facilities/cemeteries/cemeteries-search
Family Search https://www.familysearch.org
Free BDM https://www.freebmd.org.uk
GRO England https://www.gro.gov.uk
Otago Nominal Index http://marvin.otago.ac.nz
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Invercargill City Council https://icc.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