Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley
Mary Girvan was born on 22 December 1865 in Lanarkshire, Scotland – the daughter of John Girvan and Jane Innes. (See 82 Mrs J Girvan)
She came to Otago with her family in the 1860s or 1870s and she married Walter Alexander Cook on 26 June 1885.
They had 10 children and when Mary signed the suffrage petition the family were living at Blue Spur near Lawrence.
Mary died at the Dunedin Hospital on 25 June 1905 when her youngest child was just one-year-old.
Walter re-married in 1907, his second wife died in 1919 and he died in 1935, he is buried with Mary in the Lawrence 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
Interment.net http://www.interment.net/data/nz/otago/lawrence
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