Maker: Ruth McMonagle

Panel number: 63

Petition Sheet Number: 57

Person honouring: Mary Isabel Fraser

Relationship to makers:

Mary Fox was born about 1835 in Armagh, Ireland – the daughter of John Fox, a mason’s labourer, and Eliza. The family emigrated to Lanarkshire, Scotland in the 1850s where Mary married William Fraser, a carter, on 23 September 1870. 

Mary and William had two children before they emigrated to Otago in 1874 on the Janet Court. Their daughter Isabella died shortly after their arrival in Dunedin. They later had at least four more children and William worked as a coal merchant. In 1892 their 12-year-old son Thomas died when he fell under a cart he was driving and was crushed. When Mary signed the suffrage petition the family were living in David Street, Caversham. 

Mary died on 17 October 1898 and William died in 1920. They are buried in the family grave in the Southern Cemetery.