Mary Dreaver
New Zealand politician (1887-1961)
Mary Manson Dreaver (née Bain, 31 March 1887 – 19 July 1961) was a New Zealand politician of the Labour Party. She was the third woman to sit in the New Zealand House of Representatives, one of the first two women to sit in the New Zealand Legislative Council, and the only woman to sit in both chambers.
Early life and family
Mary Dreaver was born in Dunedin in 1887, the oldest of 13 children of Alexander Manson Bain, a Scottish Presbyterian cabinetmaker and trade unionist, and his Irish Catholic wife Hanna Kiely. The children were raised Anglican.
She married Andrew James Dreaver, a salesman and former boxer, in 1911 and moved to Auckland. The couple had six children. One son, Alex, was an Auckland city councillor from 1953 to 1974.
Mary Dreaver taught piano and became active in the National Spiritualist Church of New Zealand, in which she was ordained as the church's first woman minister in New Zealand in 1934. She was also a journalist. She wrote an astrology column in the New Zealand Woman's Weekly and was a broadcaster on Radio 1ZB as Aunt Maisy.
The public source identifies “Mary Dreaver” as new Zealand politician (1887-1961). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mary, Dreaver and Zealand.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6779343. VIAF identifies the subject as 8982173911332220200001. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1887, 1961, 1911 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Dreaver” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.