YOUR INDUSTRY
John Taylor will be sadly missed
Dawson cherry pioneer remembered John Taylor will always be remembered for the Dawson cherry. The fourth generation Central Otago orchardist also had many other strings to his bow. Aimee Wilson With his death in February this year, his family legacy passes on to his son Trevor and daughter Gillian, the fifth generation of the family who are now running Taylor’s Orchard. For 80 years at the forefront of the New Zealand cherry industry, R Dawson and Co started with John’s maternal great-grandmother, Ellen Dawson, and her husband Richard Dawson, who settled on the property during the 1860s gold mining era, with the view to striking it lucky. Fate played a different hand. The fruit industry owes much to the pioneering spirit of ‘Great Granny Dawson.’ She was gifted with green fingers,
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The ORCHARDIST : JUNE 2022
and had no trouble growing vegetables, berries, and flowers, as well as providing milk from a small herd of cows. She bartered her surplus produce with other miners and the local Alexandra storekeeper, Billy Theyers. When Billy found himself out of pocket for the freight on a bundle of orchard trees destined for Galloway Station, he offered these to Ellen, provided she reimbursed him for the freight. She struck a deal with her neighbour and they shared the trees. Flushed with the success of this new venture, Ellen encouraged her husband to plant more trees, which led him to become a fruit grower and give up mining in the 1870s. Today one walnut tree from this original bundle survives.
