Name, date and place of birth (3 Jul 1821 Brinkworth, Wiltshire) and death, date and country of marriage, from research file08 in May 2017.

Date and place of birth according to research file07 in June 2017:
3 September 1821 in Malmesbury, Wiltshire

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Found in March 2022:
Henry and George Dodson
2017 (updated 2021)
Written by: Joy Stephens
http://www.theprow.org.nz/enterprise/henry-and-george-dodson/#.Yj0Xei8Rp2w

New Zealand provided plenty of opportunities for four of Joseph and Isabella Dodson’s nine children to shine, with Thomas and Joseph settling in Nelson and Henry and George making their homes in the Wairau.

Born in Wiltshire, the brothers all seem to have arrived in New Zealand under their own steam. Thomas arrived in Nelson in 1841 on the Will Watch and Joseph arrived in 1854. Thomas was a member of the Nelson Provincial Council and various other bodies and Joseph became a brewer and Nelson’s first mayor.

But this story will deal with younger brothers, George and Henry and their part in the development of the Wairau.

George Dodson
George Dodson arrived in Nelson in February 1842 on the Fifeshire and was soon working with the New Zealand Company’s survey staff. He joined chief surveyor Frederick Tuckett on an expedition down the south coast to find a new settlement to be named New Edinburgh (Dunedin) in 1844.

He farmed at Spring Grove in the Waimea district prior to relocating to Marlborough. When the Wairau was opened for settlement in 1854, George was the first farmer to settle in the Spring Creek district. Spring Creek was very swampy and in the early days, George was one of many farmers who raised cattle there. However the Australian goldrush created a sudden demand for grain and George ploughed his paddocks and became a grain grower. He was the first in the area to plough with horses, the first to import a traction engine and an early adopter of a manual reaping machine.

His interest soon turned to provincial politics, although a report in the Nelson Examiner and NZ Chronicle of 1865 makes one wonder how keen he really was when he stood as Blenheim candidate for the Marlborough Provincial Council in 1856. A ‘Blenheimite’ like his brother Henry, George was keen for the seat of Government to be based in Blenheim but when quizzed on topics other than the merits of the two rival towns, confessed he had not thought about other issues. In what sounds like a bruising encounter as he fielded questions, he said he was opposed to taxation in any form and had left the old country on that account and would vote with the majority on rates issues.

George represented Tua Marina on the Marlborough Provincial Council between 1869 and 1874. As chairman of the Spring Creek River Board for 25 years from its inception in 1875, George did much to alleviate devastating flooding in the area. As the settlers burned off scrub on the Wairau Plains, water flowed freely into the rivers and floods were becoming more frequent and disastrous. George is described as being at the ‘head and front of all the river protection work carried out in the district’.

As well as being a member of the Spring Creek River Board, George was a member of the Spring Creek Road Board, the Waste Lands Board and a Justice of the Peace for 18 years. He died in 1905.

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