Church and Community Involvement

Their religious faith was very important to the early settlers. The Protestants of East and West Takaka at first met for worship in the home of Mr and Mrs Henry Lewis. Ezra Brook Dixon was probably one of the initiators when a site was cleared, timber sawn and money raised for a church in 1867. ⁷ He was certainly one of the original three trustees, together with George James Sparrow and William Lawrence Handcock. ⁸ The church was built in 1868, as far as can be determined, about the same time as the Roman Catholic church in West Takaka, said to be the first in the district. ⁹ The East Takaka church is still in use today, essentially in its original form.

Map of Dixon properties. H Arthur

Dixon was at various times a committee member of the Takaka Library and was also auditor for the library and the Takaka and Motupipi Road Board. He had a very good tenor voice and had sung in the great 1859 Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace, London, so was much in demand at the district's socials and concerts. Typically, he was one of the enthusiasts who cleared a paddock on the West Road of its logs and stumps to make a cricket pitch in 1866. Mr Fred Sparrow remembered him as the team's first captain. ¹⁰