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Edwin Daniel Berry - founder of Berry Engineering

Description: This image is believed to depict Berry family patriarch Edwin Daniel Berry. Edwin was a deeply religious man who kept a long association with the Gospel Hall in Main Street. In the mid-1930s, Edwin senior left the business in the hands of his sons and became a Christian Missionary in Fiji.

The Berry family was headed by Edwin Daniel and Elizabeth Berry (m. 1897). Their five children were Rimu Ruahine Victoria, (later Mrs Perkins, b.1899), Edwin John Horace (b.1898), Francis (Frank) Leslie, Zenas (Zean) Jefferson (b. 1906) and Tryphena (Triff) Harriet Elizabeth (b. 1910). Tryphena was a promising young art student and attended art school in London but was killed during an air raid in 1941.

Berry Engineering was established in 1907 by Edwin senior in Main Street, as E. D. Berry General Engineer but as the business grew, it moved to Ferguson Street, later expanding up Ashley Street. All three of the Berry sons worked for the company – Frank trained as a tinsmith, Zean as a refrigeration engineer and Edwin Jnr as a welder. Frank became the senior partner in the mid-1930s when Edwin snr began missionary work in Fiji. The business was responsible for several patents and manufactured a wide variety of metal equipment for the dairy and brewing industries and was later known as Mauri Refrigeration and Protech Engineering.