Biography

Bride Wharton (nee Flanagan) 1873-1905

Bride or Bridget was born on 22 October 1873 at Hogburn, Naseby. Her parents were Irish immigrants. Her father was Patrick Flanagan and her mother Mary Ryan. Bride was christened Bridget Hannah and was the third of nine children, although her two elder siblings died as infants and are buried in Naseby.

On 12 November 1903 ‘Bridget Maggie’ married Ernest Albert Wharton at the Catholic basilica in South Dunedin. Ernest was the second son of James Wharton from Dudley in England.

Bridget and Ernest had a daughter called Mary Lenore Alma in 1903. Sadly, Bridget died two years later at her residence in Duddington, North East Valley, on 14 November 1905. Ernest possibly remarried in 1914 to Constance Edith Willcox.

Marriage records say that Bride/Bridget was 24 when she married in 1903 (she would have been 30) and her tombstone says she was 27 in 1905. Both indicate that she was born in 1878 when in fact she was born five years earlier, in 1873. (Reference: birth registration and the will of her father, who left a portion of his estate in trust for his granddaughter Mary Wharton.)

Mary L. A. Wharton is entered in the New Zealand Gazette in 1940, Vol 1. Her occupation is listed as a teacher in Canterbury. Also listed in the Gazette in 1901 and 1908 is Miss Mary Wharton. Possibly she is an aunt of Mary L. A. Wharton. Mary may have been raised by her teacher aunt when Bride died, leaving her motherless at the age of only two.