The Tuckers of Clive

'Edward Tucker brought his family to Clive around 1856 and opened a fellmongery business. Their son, Richard, b.1854 married Maria (nee Harris) and they settled in a street that later would be called Tucker Lane. In 1894 Richard established a small scouring works on eight acres of land on St George's Rd, Havelock North and in 1903 with his brother, Frederick, purchased Sydney King's scouring plant at Whakatu. In 1910 the family moved to a 10-room house in Whakatu. In 1913 the nearby meat works purchased the land around the Tucker scouring works to use as a cook-house so the Tuckers moved the entire scouring plant three-quarters of a mile downstream to the main road between Napier and Hastings, used a traction engine to haul the heavy equipment. The business became the largest scouring plant in Hawke's Bay.

Richard Tucker died in 1922 aged 67 and eventually the business passed to his son William, and grandsons, Bill, Jack and Lindsay. There was no further expansion when they sold to Elders IXL Ltd in the late 1980s. Family ownership followed again with cousins Neil and Stewart Tucker's involvement, then Godfrey Hirst Ltd became owners and today it is Hawke's Bay Woolscourers, part of Cavalier corporation'.

- Gary Baines, Clive, Clive Charitable Historic Trust, 2013, p.66.

Edward Tucker was the eldest child of Edward and Jane Tucker, who emigrated from Devon to New Plymouth on the William Bryan, arriving in 1841. At some point the Tuckers, all or in part, moved from New Plymouth to Auckland, because Edward Tucker Sr.'s death is recorded there in 1855, aged 65. The following year or thereabouts, if the account above is accurate, Edward and Jane's eldest moved with his family to Clive in Hawke's Bay, to commence his fellmongery business that would later become a substantial feature of the regional economy.

See also:
History: Eric Claude Tucker 1890-1917, 23 March 2009
History: The last sight of old Plymouth, 6 April 2009
History: The Tuckers of Calstock, 31 August 2010