The Women's Suffrage Petition of 1893
It is International Women's Day today. So what better time to discover that one of your own ancestors was a suffragette? Searching the database of the 1893 suffrage petition on the NZ History website, I came across Fanny M. Hannan of Seaward Bush, near Invercargill. Fanny is my great-grandmother. She was one of more than 25,000 signatories to the petition, which, when stitched together, was more than 270 metres in length. First page of the 1893 Suffrage Petition, http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/suffrage-petition-1893 After a long struggle, the suffragettes finally achieved their goal, when on 19 September 1893 a new Electoral Act was signed into law, making New Zealand the first country in the world where women gained the right to vote. As for Fanny, she lived long enough to see the First Labour Government come to power in 1935, passing away in 1941, as New Zealand fought the Second World War. And it seems Fanny was not the only member of her family to sign the pe...