suffrage_petition
Surname: 
Aston
Given names: 
Margaret
Given address: 
Sussex Square
Sheet No: 331
Town/Suburb: 
Newtown
City/Region: 
Wellington
Notes: 

Sussex Square renamed Basin Reserve.

Biographical information provided for by Stefanie Lash for the He Tohu exhibition:

Margaret McKay was born in 1870, and married Andrew Aston, a carpenter, in 1890, aged 20. They had five children, and all survived childhood except for Elsie Myrtle, who died aged four.

When she signed the Women’s Suffrage Petition, aged 23, the family were living at Sussex Square in Wellington, an area that now forms the Basin Reserve. Margaret appears to have signed her name with two ‘t’s, but her name is spelled the usual way in records so this may be an error.

The Aston family later lived in Daniell Street and Tainui Terrace, before moving to Auckland, where Andrew became a master carpenter and then a builder’s foreman. They lived in Franklin Road in Freeman’s Bay, and finally in Rose Road in Grey Lynn. Margaret died in 1932, aged 62, survived by her husband and four children.

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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