William Dallas was born at Kincardineshire, Scotland, in about 1834. As a young man he worked in the tow and jute mills at Dundee. In 1858 he married Mary Kerr and the newlyweds took ship almost immediately for Otago on the Jura. A couple of years later William’s parents and five siblings followed him to the colony.
All of them settled in the South Otago area. William led the charge, spending his first two years in Otago working at Milton. He bought a horse for the journey south and Mary and a friend of hers took turns riding it while William walked alongside. When Gabriel Read passed through Milton to go prospecting inland, he invited William to accompany him. William spurned the offer but after Read’s famous discovery of gold in mid 1861 he spent a short time at the diggings. He then took up waggoning to the goldfield, a much more reliable way to make a living.
Later in 1861 William and Mary moved to the Clutha district and purchased a 300-acre property at Te Houka. Their homestead was one of the first in the area. Over the next 46 years William gradually increased his holdings around the original farm until retiring to Balclutha in 1907. Throughout that time he maintained a heavy schedule of public commitments. He was an elder of the Balclutha Presbyterian Church, a member of the Te Houka Road Board and later the Clutha County Council, he served on school committees and was a driving force in the A & P Society. In later years he was a member of the Otago Land Board and a commissioner for the Otago High School.
Mary meanwhile kept the home fires burning and looked after their four sons and three daughters until her death in 1884, aged 52. William lived in retirement in Balclutha until his death there in 1920, aged 88.
William and Mary Dallas (née Kerr)