Benjamin Naylor

Benjamin Naylor (5 August 1830 – 16 June 1905) was a New Zealand pioneer, merchant, mayor and farmer from Clyde. He arrived in Central Otago during the gold rush of the 1860s and opened a general store.

Biography Benjamin Naylor was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, on 5 August 1830. After training as a blacksmith, he left England for Australia in 1851, and spent 10 years on the goldfields of Victoria, Australia.

He moved to New Zealand in 1861 during the Central Otago gold rush at Gabriel's Gully. He became one of the first storekeepers in Dunstan (which was renamed Clyde on 22 May 1865) when he arrived with the first wave of gold miners around 1862. From a makeshift shop in Sunderland Street, he began selling provisions to the miners. By 1869 he had built a stone general store. As his family grew, his estate expanded and he added eight stone buildings including a homestead, stables, and barns.

In 1875 Naylor was joined in his business by his American cousin, also called Benjamin Naylor, who was born in Coldspring, New York. He had a wide reputation as a breeder of first class Clydesdale horses.

In advertisements, Naylor described himself as "a general draper, clothier, hosier, haberdasher, boot and shoe importer, wine, spirit & provision merchant and general storekeeper".

In November 1885, he married Mary, the daughter of Thomas Percy (formerly of Blantyre, Lanarkshire, Scotland), and they had four sons and three daughters.

Naylor's Store

Benjamin Naylor's buildings were built from schist, the grey metamorphic rock from the surrounding hills and gorges "which bore huge reefs of alluvial gold". Sullivan was described as "a pioneer at the forefront of the renaissance of tourism in Central Otago, which in a similar way to the gold rushes of the 1860s has changed the landscape, and marked a new era in the history of the region."

The Sydney Morning Herald described modern-day Clyde as having "movie-set good looks and ranked one of the best preserved gold-rush towns in New Zealand."

Naylor's Store, now known as Oliver's, became an Historic Place Category 1 in 2005.