suffrage_petition
Surname: 
Morley
Given names: 
F.
Given address: 
Mount Eden
Sheet No: 18
Town/Suburb: 
Mt Eden
City/Region: 
Auckland
Notes: 

Biography contributed by Colyn Storer (née Morley)

'F Morley' was Unica Ann Harvey who married Frank Marriott Morley on 1 January 1878, in Auckland.

Unica was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on 17 December 1852, the second daughter of Charles Harvey and Rebecca Caroline Sheppard, who had married at Geelong, Victoria, in 1843. Their first four children were born in and around Auckland, until they returned to Victoria on the Schooner Cicely in August 1852.  They returned to Auckland when Unica was very young and her younger sister was born there. Her father died in 1857 and her mother re-married in 1859. She spent her childhood in Auckland. 

Unica married Frank Marriott Morley (brother of Emma Gray Morley) on 1 January 1878 at the home of Mrs Dennett in Parnell, after they had declared their Intention to Marry on 24 December 1877 in Auckland. Unica stated she had lived in New Zealand for 18 years and Frank for 15 years. He was working as a grocer at the time. One of the witnesses was Unica's sister Sarah Harvey, later Laybourn, and Frank's father William Morley. Unica and Frank had no children.

Her older brother Charles, born in 1848, married Frank Morley’s sister Mary Elizabeth in 1874. Sadly Charles drowned off Great Barrier Island in 1892, leaving six young children.

Frank worked as a grocer in Auckland till the 1890s. The couple then moved to Melbourne where he continued to work as a grocer at 162 Camberwell Road, Hawthorn, in 1896 and at 425 Rathdown St, Carlton, as recorded in 1903-1904. They returned to Auckland some time after that, where Frank died at the home of his sister Mary, at 35 St Mary’s Road, Ponsonby, in August 1909.

Uni, as she was known, was a piano teacher both in Auckland and in Melbourne. She had returned to Melbourne by 1913 and lived firstly at 164 Napier St, South Melbourne, then at Kew, and later for many years at Stanley St, Auburn, with friends Minnie and Louise Parr and their cousin Winifred Watt. She was supported financially in later life by family and friends.

Unica died at Auburn on 14 November 1933 and was buried at Burwood Cemetery.

She left a wonderfully detailed will leaving her treasures, trinkets and possessions to almost twenty of her family and friends in Victoria and New Zealand.

Sources

BDM Online NZ
BDM Victoria
Archives New Zealand (Notices of Intention to Marry)
Ancestry.com.au (Australian Electoral Rolls, 1901-1980)
Public Record Office Victoria (Inquest 1933/1350)
BillionGraves
Family information

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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