Rev David Borrie and his mother Janet (née Borrie)

David Borrie was one of the first locally trained ministers for the Presbyterian Church in Otago and, naturally, the apple of his mother’s eye. The Borries came to the province on the Maori in 1857. Janet was born in Dunkeld, Scotland, in 1816. When she was a child her mother died and her father remarried. The stepmother did not get on with her new husband’s children and Janet’s oldest brother, Donald, eventually decided to emigrate. He came to Otago in 1852. Janet meanwhile had married James Borrie – no relation – and proceeded to produce seven children as they shifted from tenant farm to tenant farm in Perthshire. Comparing prospects for their children in Scotland and Otago, they decided to follow Donald Borrie to the colony.

David Borrie was 10 years old when the family emigrated. They settled at West Taieri, near where his uncle Donald had established his farm ‘Balmoral’. They were well placed to prosper when gold was discovered in Otago a few years later and small farms became highly profitable by supplying the miners’ needs. The Borries soon owned a 210-acre property they called ‘Huntly’. It was more than they could ever have hoped for in Perthshire.

Instead of farming, however, David decided to train for the ministry. He was one of the first students at the new University of Otago in 1869 and the first at Dunedin’s new theological hall in 1876. He was ordained at Waihola in 1877 and his mother, widowed since 1866, soon came to live with him.

Janet had taken over the care of seven orphaned grandchildren after her eldest son, James, was killed in 1877. They also came to live with her at the manse in Waihola. In 1881 David went back to Scotland to further his education. When he returned to Otago two years later, he married Eliza Forbes and took charge of the North East Valley church. Janet came to live nearby. She died in Dunedin in 1898, aged 82. David Borrie went on to an illustrious career in the church and when he died in 1912 an obituary described him as ‘the real Bishop of Otago’. He was 65.