 His parents, Thomas and Julia Rundle were both born in Cornwall, England, and had come out to New Zealand where Thomas became the storekeeper at No Town from the 1870s.The village also had a hotel and post office.William had three brothers (T.A., C.G., and Edward James), and two sisters, Tryphena who married William Robert Moore in 1913 and lived at Mokau and later in Auckland, and a second sister whose name is unknown but she later became Mrs R.C.