This was a family who did a lot of firsts in farming and technology in South Taranaki - like herd tastings, milking by machine, making chopped silage, the use of hydro-electricity and owning a tractor.
They also exploited short-wave radio and explored photography long before either were popular.
Their descendant, minister Steven Joyce, is similarly innovative, having being born and raised in Taranaki and made his name in radio, building the company Mediaworks, before coming to Parliament.
In our day visiting businesses and speaking to groups around the electorate after the Patea exhibition opening, it was obvious that the generations who have come to our country have enjoyed the hybrid vigour from cross-pollination with other entrepreneurs who have also found their way here.
It is amazing what is going on behind the doors of various enterprises around our patch. Ideas for creating jobs, and exploiting opportunities, making remoteness an advantage and not a roadblock to innovation.
Steven puts New Zealand's ability to think outside the square and find new ways of doing things down to the fact that our forebears, once in New Zealand, couldn't go back to where they had come from to get whatever they needed for that next job.
They had to find another way of doing it or making something fit for purpose.
I think that is what lies behind Kiwis hating rules and regulations in the same way. We are used to finding our way around such things as they will only slow us down.
That doesn't make us a nation of lawbreakers, but it does mean we push the envelope and test the boundaries.
It is why Kiwis will be launching satellites into space from the Mahia Peninsula shortly at an infinitesimal fraction of the price of NASA.
It's why we are farming in Botswana, selling croissants to the French and graphic design to Hollywood.
Nobody told us we can't ... and if they did we wouldn't believe them.
It is growing jobs in Whanganui and turning heads around the world. Pure magic.
-Chester Borrows is the MP for Whanganui.
