Description Comments

Picnic Group

Description: This image is part of the Berry Family collection and was likely taken by Palmerston North Engineer Edwin Daniel Berry. The collection holds several images of large group picnics, which may have been arranged by the Berry Engineering social club, who regularly held such events.

The images do however appear to be from and earlier decade, and may in fact depict picnics organised by another group - possibly the Farmers Dairy Union who employed Edwin before he began his own business in 1907.

However, several faces are recognisable from other images in this collection, but none appear to be from the immediate Berry family.

Berry Engineering was subsequently established as 'E. D. Berry General Engineer' in Main street 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 (Frances Leslie) trained as a tinsmith, Zean (Zenas Jefferson) as a refrigeration engineer and Edwin Jnr (Edwin Horace John) 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.