The Wynyard Reunion 2018

The Wynyard family reunion was held at Waitangi in November 2018. It was a lovely event which brought parts of the wider whanau together to recognise the connections despite the fact that many of us had never previously met. Surprisingly, there were also people at the event that had known eachother from childhood but had never known they were connected through their whakapapa.

One of the highlights for me was the giant family tree that I had printed out and was hanging on the wall in a room the Waitangi Museum had kindly lent to the family for the event. I had provided pens and sticky notes and it gave me huge pleasure to see people climbing up on chairs or whatever was handy to add their part of the family to the tree. Some people directly typed their details into the My Heritage programme and saw their names appear on the tree on the big screen which was very touching.

Inevitably there are still many people missing, but there are now 1300 people thanks in no small way to the work done at the reunion.

There were lots of people missing from the reunion and I was very sorry that they had not managed to get there, or had chosen not to participate for their own reasons. I suspect that some of those reasons are historical and I would very much like to acknowledge that there are issues

This is me, Barbara Gaston, at the reunion. Probably the best picture of me from the night.

with being the descendants of someone like Robert Henry Wynyard, but I am also very proud to be part of this family as it is today. I think that the Māori/Pākehā elements of our family enrich it far more than they detract from it.

I am keen to have members of the Wynyard whanau be guest bloggers on this site as a way of building permanent connections. Let me know if you would like to participate. (Contact below)