A. Slemint

Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley

Agnes Milliken was born about 1848 in Girvan, Ayrshire, Scotland. She was the daughter of John Milliken, a cotton weaver, and Agnes Lapsley.

Agnes married William McCartney, a fisherman and grocer, in 1871. Her daughter Elizabeth Logan McCartney was born in 1871 and her husband William also died in 1871.

Agnes then married William Slemint, a carpenter, in 1877, in Girvan and, in 1880, they emigrated to Otago on the Canterbury with Agnes’ daughter Elizabeth.

The family settled , at first, in Invercargill and they had five children.

In 1886 their 'newly erected dwelling-house' was totally destroyed by fire. William had been using one of the rooms as a workshop when a kerosene lamp overturned onto a heap of wood shavings and exploded.

When Agnes signed the suffrage petition the family had moved to Dunedin and they were living with her daughter Bessie McCartney in Upper Stafford St.

William Slemint died in 1903 and Agnes on 18 August 1934. She is buried with her husband in the Southern Cemetery.

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