Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Helen Russell was born about 1830 in Ayrshire, Scotland.
She married Samuel Forsyth, a ships carpenter, in 1850 and they had a daughter the following year before they moved to Greenock in Renfrewshire.
They had a further 10 children over, the next few years, before Samuel died in 1875.
In 1887 Helen, accompanied by her three youngest children, emigrated to Otago on the Arawa.
They settled in Dunedin and when Helen signed the suffrage petition she was living in Union Street.
In later life she moved to Auckland where she died at her son’s home on 14 January 1905.
She is buried in the Waikumete Cemetery.
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/
Scotlands People https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
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