Mrs I Hardley

Originally transcribed as Mrs T Hardley

Biography contributed by Rose Webber (great-great-granddaughter)

Mary Hardley (nee Cheetham) was born 1 August 1835 in Bingham, Nottinghamshire, England to John, a framework stocking knitter and Mary (nee Wilford). In 1851 when Mary was 16 she was a servant in the house of John Ely, a druggist in Bingham.

On 12 October 1856 when Mary was 21, she married 22-year-old Isaac Hardley, a tinplate worker from Peterborough. All of Mary’s children were born in Peterborough, Annie (1857), John (1859-1863), George (1862), John (1864) and Isaac (1868).

At the invitation of Isaac’s brother Samuel, who had come out 10 years earlier, the family emigrated to New Zealand. They sailed on the Columbus arriving in Lyttleton on 2 September 1873. They then made their way to Charleston on the West Coast, a gold rush town where Samuel had a business supplying hardware to miners.

A year later Mary’s daughter Annie married miner Edward Patten and by April 1875 Mary was a grandmother at the age of 40. Mary and Isaac lived on Darkies Terrace Road in Charleston for about 10 years until they moved on to Westport where Isaac continued working as a tinsmith/plumber. Mary was 57 when she signed the suffrage petition in Westport along with her daughter Annie (Mrs Patten), her two granddaughters Ettie and Clara Patten and daughter-in-law Mary Hardley (Mrs J Hardley).

In 1896 Mary and Isaac moved to Hawera where sons Isaac and John had a plumbing business and Annie joined her parents around 1905.

By the time Isaac died in 1912, all of Mary’s sons were living in Auckland. Mary died 21 September 1922 aged 87 years. She is buried in a family plot in Hawera Cemetery with Isaac and Annie.

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