the Māori language. She left the area and in 1905 had a daughter, Dorothea Grace, in Auckland. Moving to Rotorua, she worked as a domestic in private homes until 10 June 1908, when she married Peter Soljak. He was an immigrant from Dalmatia, at the time part of the Austrian Empire, who had little education or fluency in English, but was prepared to work at various jobs to support the family. He had left his homeland to avoid conscription into the Austrian army and strongly opposed Austrian rule in Dalmatia. At one time he worked as a gumdigger and at the time of their marriage, was a restaurateur. Resuming her teaching at Pukaru in 1910, Soljak was provided with nursery care for her children because of her skill working with Māori students. Peter worked nearby in Kawakawa building a bridge. When Soljak gave birth to her fourth child in 1912, she left teaching and the family moved to Tauranga, where Peter worked on various construction and transport projects. They struggled financially and moved often. Soon after World War I ended, when her seventh child, Paul, was born in 1919, Soljak was refused a bed in the maternity home and told it was because she was an enemy alien and had forfeited her nationality by marrying a foreigner. Given the option of prison or registration, Soljak registered as an alien "under protest". The action also revoked her right to vote. Nationality issues and beginning of activism New Zealand's first nationality law, the Aliens Act of 1866, specified that foreign women who married New Zealanders automatically acquired the nationality of the husband. It applied only to the wives of British subjects. Because of the way British nationality laws were drafted, persons became subjects or were naturalised as British based upon local definitions for each jurisdiction. There was not an overriding imperial definition for who was a British subject. This meant that someone could be a British subject in one part of the empire, but not considered British in another part of the dominions of Britain. In 1914, this was rectified when the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act provided that the nationality of a British subject would be the same for each place within the realm. New Zealand introduced a measure to adopt the common code of British nationality in 1914, but passage was postponed by the outbreak of the war.