The clear winner? The James (after his old man, and my great-grandfather) Taylor branch, of which there were 1,500 living descendants. James number two and his wife, Mary McGregor, married both aged eighteen, had certainly given their all to populate Aotearoa-New Zealand. They had fourteen children. Indeed, of the elder James and Elizabeth’s relatively modest family of seven, three had produced fourteen offspring each, another one thirteen, and the most fertile of all, their youngest son, David, and his wife had produced fifteen. No wonder that in 1986 there were 5,000 living descendants (with a further 2,000 married into the family). Twenty-plus years further on, I guess the tally would have increased exponentially! My two sisters and I have a tally of twelve grandchildren…none of whom were born when the family reunion took place. As is often remarked, the Taylors have bred like rabbits.

A perusal of the family tree (a 300-page book) shows that James and Elizabeth have a very wide variety of descendants. ‘Taylor’, for a start, is no longer the predominant surname. Of the 1,500 at the reunion only about fifty males still carried the Taylor name. There are Maori, Polynesian, Dutch, Greek, Indian, German, Russian, French and Scandinavian surnames, along with, obviously, the Scottish, Irish and English. An even wider variety of occupations: teachers, nurses, dentists, doctors, lawyers, a judge or two, a diplomat, farmers and farm workers, accountants and business people, freezing workers, factory workers, shop assistants, police, fire service, prison officers, maybe a few prison inmates, although not listed as such, the armed services…and even two or three writers! There have been those who have made their mark in sport, including at least one obligatory All Black. Seven of the descendants of James and Elizabeth were killed in World War I, three at Flanders alone. In an historic link to this latter sacrifice, it is likely that the Taylor family were among those who migrated from Flanders to Scotland in the twelfth century to work in the wool trade. Many others served in and survived both wars. In 1986, one in every sixteen Southlanders was a descendant of this couple.

It was good that my father, then approaching his mid-eighties, was able to attend; one of the dozen or so oldest at the gathering. It was great that he could catch up with at least one or two of his surviving first cousins; originally they had numbered eighty-eight. He had often recounted, with some pride, his early memory of attending the funeral of ‘Granny’: Mary McGregor Taylor, the granny of the eighty-eight. Ivan had been allowed to ride in the horse-drawn hearse.

Family? You can’t avoid them when it’s a family of this size. I’ve taught them, without knowing I’ve taught them. They’ve been living down the road, in the next street, without my realizing for months or years. They’ve popped up at places where I’ve been speaking up and down the country.

‘I think you can ask him now,’ the man said to the woman, at the end of whatever I had to say at the Nelson Library about my last young-adult novel, Land of Milk and Honey, just a couple of years back. The couple, about my own age, were a little hesitant and had hovered nearby while I answered the questions of those who had waited behind for a personal word.

I saw the woman reach into her bag and bring out the book, our family tree and history: The Taylor Millions. I smiled and said, ‘Yes, you’re right. We must be cousins—somewhere along the line.’ I was delighted that they had waited so long and so patiently. We had a good chat.

In 1987, the descendants of James and Elizabeth Taylor unveiled a stone to mark their graves in the Otautau Cemetery. I have sometimes wondered why their resting place was left unmarked at the time of their deaths. It was certainly not as if the family had not prospered sufficiently and had been unable to afford headstones at the time. That prospering had certainly resulted from the actions of the old couple in uprooting themselves and their children, leaving their homeland to find a new life on the other side of the world. A degree of gratitude might have been expected! Maybe Scots parsimony is more than just a myth.

And of James and Betsy themselves in old age? Did they ever just stand and look around them in this southern land so far from their own roots, in wonder at what their actions had wrought? Did they ever hanker for the Highlands, the glens, the Lowlands of their native land, thinking of kith and kin left behind? Probably not. I guess the old boy and his wife were far too pragmatic for such sentimental indulgence.