Emily Alice Benge

Emily Alice Collett was born at Lower Hutt in 1872, the daughter of Thomas and Mary Collett. She was eighteen on 9th July 1890 when she married John Thomas Benge, who was born in 1870. The marriage produced a total of five children for the couple, all born in New Zealand, as follows. Elizabeth Alice Benge (born 1890) married Andrew David Gillies (born 1880) in 1911, who had one child David John Gillies (born 26.03.1912), Eva Maud Benge (born 23.01.1892, died 1972) married William George Toms (born 26.11.1892, died 1976) in 1919, Sydney John Benge (born 1893, died 1894), Albert George Benge (born 1898, died 1943), and Harold Percy Benge (born 04.12.1903, died 1987) who married Irene Alice Prouse (born 1901, died 1963) in 1926. It may be significant that in 1931 Emily’s niece Elsie Mary Collett (Ref. 6Q6) married Leslie Allan Benge.

Also at an earlier time in their life the surname was incorrectly quoted as being Burge, while it was clearly Benje in the legal documents drawn up by Emily’s father.  The farm set up by her father Thomas Collett on the eastern side of the Mangaroa Valley was later managed by Emily and her husband.  Like her sister Elizabeth (above), Emily was not named in her father’s Will of 1903, but was added by a Codicil to the Will in 1908, which stated she and Elizabeth should each receive £25, rather than an equal share with her other siblings.  At the time of the death of her father in 1930, it was just Emily of Upper Hutt and her sister Ellen who were sworn in during the proving of their father’s Will, with their older sister Elizabeth having died two years earlier.  Emily Alice Benge nee Collett lived well into her nineties, when she died on 15th March 1966 and was buried with her husband at Upper Hutt, following his death on 6th June 1947.