E Belk

Signed family name

Belk

Signed given name

Given address

Main Street

Sheet number

310

Town/Suburb

Palmerston North

City/Region

Manawatu / Horowhenua

Notes

Surname originally mistranscribed as 'Belt'. (See community contributions below)

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

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Margaret Tenna… Posted: 18 Sep 2018

Such a disappointment that my greatgrandmother's surname has been transcribed incorrectly as 'Belt' - it should be 'Belk', and for those of us who know the rather unusual surname, the signature reads as 'Belk'. The surname can be cross referenced to the street directories of the time, which have Emma Belk, Main St, as a grocer, though she also lived in Feilding at a later date. Can this be changed?

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Margaret Tennant Posted: 23 Sep 2018

This name has been incorrectly transcribed, as a cross-referencing to Wises's Street Directory will show. It should read 'E Belk', and it would be great to have this corrected.
Not all those who signed the suffrage petition in Palmerston North were from the more affluent section of society. Emma Belk (nee Dutton) was listed as a ‘grocer’ in the 1893 Wise’s Directory, as she helped run her son Matthew’s small grocery shop in Main Street Palmerston North. Emma was born in 1820 so she was 73 and a widow when she signed the petition. Married at the age of 20 to James Duncan Belk, she gave birth to 14 children, five of whom died in childhood. Eight of the surviving children and five grandchildren came with Emma and her husband James Duncan Belk when they migrated to New Zealand as part of the Emigrants’ and Colonists’ Aid Corporation scheme in 1873. By this time Emma was 53. The three generation family of 16 was among the first group to arrive in Feilding in January 1874. Feilding was then a swampy, mosquito-ridden clearing in the bush, with no accommodation for the settler party, which included babies. The story is that the seven men in the advance party were so appalled by the site that they demanded to be taken back to Palmerston North, but the driver of the bullock team which brought them took off on his horse, leaving them stranded.
James Belk was described as a mariner on his marriage certificate, later as a tanner, and as a farmer on migration records, and the family appear to have had a precarious existence – a Feilding property owned by James Belk was pulled down because he was unable to pay the rent. James and Emma eventually moved to Palmerston North, probably in the early 1880s, and this is where James died in 1889 and Emma is recorded as helping with her son’s shop. She died in 1901. The story of Emma Belk and her immediate family is not one of prosperity or prominence, and there is a sense of hardship inscribed upon the grim countenance in her photograph, which is on Manawatu Heritage.
Margaret Tennant (Belk)
22.9.2018

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Amelia Belk Posted: 20 Feb 2022

Good job Aunty Margaret

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Stuart Posted: 22 Apr 2023

Thanks for getting this corrected Margaret. It means I am now able to find my great-great grandmother and show her signature to my daughter. It's very fitting since I am able to trace my paternal side back to the petition so it brings fantastic balance to follow the maternal chain all the way back, as well. Stuart (son of Lindsay Rae Cotter, daughter of Olive Emma Jones, daughter of Ada Emma Belk, daughter of James and Emma).

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D. Emily Hicks Posted: 31 Jul 2023

Thank you so much for providing information about Emma Belk (nee Dutton). She was the mother of my gg grandmother Jane Duncan Belk, born in 1850 (Bethnal Green). Jane married Stefano Rugguri, They were the parents of Angela Rugguri. Angela married a minister, Frank N. Daniel. Angela played the church organ. Frank and Angela were the parents of Guy R. Daniel, a newspaper executive who lived in a Victorian mansion in Belvedere, California. Guy R. Daniel married Iris Turk (nee Dickson), a minister in the Church of Religious Science. Guy and Iris were the parents of my mother June Iris Daniel. June, an adult education teacher, attended Stanford, where she met my father William Wesley Hicks, Jr., a minister and a teacher, the son of a San Francisco industrialist, W.W.. Hicks, Sr. My son, Guillermo Gomez-Hicks, is a computer scientist. He attended Pomona College. My niece and nephew, Daniel St. John (MA, USC) and Jennifer St. John are both classical musicians.

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