Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Jessie Milroy Gibson was born about 1857 in Kirkmaiden, Wigtownshire, Scotland.
She married James Wilson, an agricultural labourer, in 1878 and they had three children before the family emigrated to Otago about 1883.
They had a further four children after their arrival & they settled on the Taieri Plain, south of Dunedin.
When Jessie signed the suffrage petition they were living at Woodside and in the 1900s the family moved to Southland.
Jessie died at Toa, near Birchfield, in Southland on 21 July 1926 and James died in 1940, they are 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
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