Peter Burney - Peter Martin Burney

Hello Bryan
My name is Christine Richardson and I am involved in a project in New Zealand called Suffrage in Stitches. We are researching the biographies of women who signed a petition in 1893 for Votes for Women. One of the women who signed the petition was Ellen Burney nee McGrath. She was married to PETER MARTIN BURNEY who appears to have been born in Jamaica. I have found no official record of his birth there, however.

Peter and Ellen had several children in New Zealand and someone has suggested the children must have had a hard time as they were dark-skinned, being of mixed race. I haven't seen any documented evidence that this was the case however so I'm trying to establish Peter Martin Burney's origins as it seemed to me that a person of Afro-Caribbean ethnicity in New Zealand in the late 1880s would have been very unusual.

I saw your post about your DNA which I found intriguing. There are some reasons why you might have no African or CAribbeans DNA, one of them being that PETER MARTIN BURNEY was of European/Caucasian origin.

I have read that many Irish families emigrated to the Caribbean and I wonder if Peter's family was one of those. Or is there some other explanation? So I'm writing to you to see if you have been able to establish any further information.
Kind regards
Christine

Hi,

We know beyond doubt that Petet Martin Burney was born in Jamaica in 1847. We know that he was of dark skin due to records including spoken history confirmed from descendants and also newspaper records. Their is no doubt he was of colour. I have also had a DNA test with Ancestry.com and it came back with 2% Nigerian which also makes sense as their are records of the slave trade in Jamacia and proves the movement of slaves from Nigeria to Jamacia. It appears that Ellen especially had it hard due to being married to a dark skinned person and may of had something to do with her death. I am part of a group activity searching any information on our family tree and have been able to get info on Ellen but less so on Peter and are always willing to share information.

I have no record of Ellen having anything to do with the suffrage movement but would be very keen to find out more.

Their is now a facebook page for descendants of Peter Martin Burney to share information. Here is the link to the page

https://m.facebook.com/groups/3234568666630548/?tsid=0.482990813671...