This is the Introduction chapter. To read further requires access to a library copy, borrow from a friend or purchase. There is no e-version available. To return to the Wesleyan home page, click here.
Introduction
“Once they were released from prison they nearly always joined the Wesleyans.” – The Anglican Bishop Nixon to Lieutenant Governor Denison, c1850
When the English set up their convict colonies in Van Diemen’s Land from 1803, the Church of England Rev. Robert (Bobby) Knopwood was assigned to David Collins’ expedition as Chaplain. On arrival at Hobart Town, the Chaplain:
… assumed the established religion of England was that of the colony.[1]
However, among the wide variety of people who descended on Van Diemen’s Land, other religions were represented. Wesleyan preachers – later known as ‘Methodists’ and by 2022 as part of the Uniting Church – were the pioneer clergy of colonial Australia. Along with the Quakers, they ventured into moral and social frontiers where the Church of England was unwilling to go.
The Wesleyans
The Wesleyan movement started in England with John Wesley. The son of Samuel Wesley, a minister of the Church of England, John was himself also an ordained Anglican minister. He apparently sought to bring the ‘lost souls’ to the Church of England and to bring hope to the downtrodden who had little to hope for in a world where about 75% of children died before their fifth birthdays and gin was the downfall of many adults.
John Wesley preached that:
… no one was too poor, too humble or too degraded to be born again and share in the privilege of divine grace, to serve the one Master, Christ, and to attain to the blessed fruition of God’s peace”.[2]
By 1739, the Church of England had made John Wesley unwelcome in their churches, so he took to preaching ‘the glad tidings of salvation’ to anyone, anywhere. He went on to recruit lay helpers who took on preaching duties, and he also introduced hymn-singing by the congregations who gathered. This was aided by his brother, Charles Wesley[3], who wrote many of the hymns which became a signature of Methodism,[4] with a lifetime total of 8,989 hymns.
The Methodists were happy folk. They sang at meeting, on the way to meeting, on the way home from meeting, at home, at work, at leisure.[5]
John Wesley didn’t plan to build a new denomination, but the established church refused to let his people join them so he and his compatriots went ahead and ordained preachers so that they could administer the sacraments to his followers. To begin with, they used the same version of the Bible, the same Book of Common Prayer and the same Catechism as the Church of England, so they shared a common ground.
The Wesleyans built a practical religion, and preachers were expected to have the skills to earn a living for themselves and their families where the church could not support them.
All members were also expected to contribute to good works, however small their donation might be. It was these pragmatic people who spread out in the world as missionaries, to the ends of the earth, and even as far as the depths of Van Diemen’s Land.
The Wesleyans in Van Diemen’s Land
The Rev. Benjamin Carvosso[6] appears to have been the first Wesleyan missionary who preached in Van Diemen’s Land. He visited Hobart Town, on 25 April 1820, when on his way to Sydney aboard the Saracen.
Warned that any attempt to preach in the open air would almost certainly be greeted by missiles and insults, he replied … that that would be no new experience to a Methodist preacher.[7]
He sent the bell man around the town to announce the forthcoming service in the Court House yard. The preacher’s wife, Deborah Carvosso, was a gifted singer and stood beside him. She commenced with the first hymn. It was said that ‘when her beautiful voice led off, a great hush fell upon that motley crowd’.
His text was: ‘Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light.’[8] That afternoon he preached to the prisoners in the Hobart Town Gaol, on ‘The Parable of the Prodigal Son’.
The first Methodist Society was founded in Hobart Town in 1821 by Benjamin Nokes, CPL Waddy and fellow soldiers of the 48th Regiment. Others joined them to form a class at Charles Donn’s carpenter shop until the Wesleyan Mission in London sent the Rev. William Horton to lead the group at the end of that year. The first church was built in Melville Street in 1825.[9]
In the meantime, CPL Waddy had been promoted and transferred to the new punishment station at Macquarie Harbour in 1822. With no religious leadership there, he did what he could for other soldiers and the convicts while appealing for a lay preacher to volunteer for service there. Lieutenant Governor Sorell accepted an offer in 1823 from Mr John Hutchinson from Hobart Town to do what he could at Macquarie Harbour. He laboured there until in March 1825 he was offered a transfer to Launceston. However, he had heard that:
The wickedness of the people of Launceston, I am informed by an eyewitness, exceeds all description … ignorance, blasphemy, drunkenness, adultery and vice of every description.[10]
Instead, he returned to Sydney where he was to become the first Wesleyan minister to be ordained in Australia and married Mary Oakes with whom he attempted to establish a mission in Tonga.
Despite considerable efforts, no Church of England parson was found willing to provide religious instruction at Macquarie Harbour. Lieutenant Governor George Arthur therefore asked the Wesleyan Methodist Conference to provide a missionary. Rev. William Schofield duly arrived in Hobart Town in 1827 and ‘with some reluctance’ accepted the appointment. On arrival at Sarah Island, he was ‘distressed, but not dismayed’.[11]
Rev. Schofield and his new wife, Martha Milnes, spent four years at Macquarie Harbour and he then went on to serve largely in New South Wales. However, he had established the programme that guided his successor, Rev. Manton, who then took it with him to Port Arthur. In addition to regular religious services, this included weekly meetings for religious conversation, evening lectures on topics of interest, hymn singing, and a voluntary night school teaching literacy and numeracy.
For the early Wesleyan church in Van Diemen’s Land, the penal settlements (Maria Island and Macquarie Harbour initially, followed by Port Arthur and Point Puer) became part of its regular ‘roster’ of appointments. Five of the six early clergy at Wesley Church on Melville Street in Hobart served at Port Arthur at various times. These appointments occurred with the full support of Lieutenant Governor George Arthur and later Lieutenant Governor Sir John Franklin at a time when the Anglican clergy would not accept conditions as they were at the penal settlements. This was a problem, as the convict system as designed was based upon:
… a solid foundation: a period of incarceration where convicts would be reformed through spiritual guidance, education and training, followed by a community-based release program.[12]
The Wesleyans’ role at these penal settlements is still the topic of controversy in historical discussion. Were they the dupes of authority or compassionate supporters of the suffering and down-trodden?
While the clergy were mainly interested in saving souls, the educational role of the Wesleyans in supervising the teaching of literacy and numeracy had a profound effect, as found by Dr Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, in Closing Hell’s Gates: The Death Of A Convict Station[13], a study of Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement.
From the Government point of view back in London, clergy were necessary to provide moral guidance as part of the reform process so that when a convict was released, they would be a useful member of the colonial society. Most convicts were transported for a specific period and, when the time was served, they would be released. This was the ‘carrot’ provided with the assumption that they would work hard and cause no trouble.
Wesleyan Mission and Government Duties
The Wesleyan chaplains posted to the Tasman Peninsula were tasked with two very different responsibilities.
The Wesleyan Missionary Society required them to save souls for God. This included baptising babies (and adults if it was requested, though this was rare) as well as providing funeral services for the dead.
Meanwhile, the Government provided housing, rations and half their stipend so that they would provide moral guidance to the whole community, but especially to all convicts. In addition, they had to oversee all schools on the Peninsula and maintain records of baptisms and deaths.
By mid-1837, differences of opinion surfaced among the Wesleyan clergy over the value of maintaining their post at Port Arthur. Rev. Simpson, newly posted to Point Puer, was horrified at what he found and wanted to close the mission station. He was over-ruled by Rev. Manton, then working in the settled districts, who wanted the station to continue, ‘especially at Point Puer’.[14]
Manton still had hopes for Point Puer. He had written in his diary of a visit in 1835, the year after he had left:
I went with the Minister [Rev Butters] to visit Point Puer and my visit gave me much pleasure. The boys sing the canticles superbly, and they showed great evidence of memory by repeating the subjects and lessons of several sermons which has been delivered to them on former occasions by Mr Butters.[15]
The juvenile population at Point Puer of 227 boys – taught in eight classes with monitors at that time – was increasing. Rev. Simpson, despite his difficulties, reported with a different slant on the situation in December 1837, at the end of his posting to Point Puer, when he needed to show things in their best light:
During the past six months an increased degree of attention has been manifested by many of the boys to their school duties in consequence of a determination expressed by the Commandant that no boy shall be recommended for assignment who has not a competent knowledge of reading, writing and the simple rules of arithmetic.
The overseers, Simpson wrote, have ‘generally been correct and attentive to their duties in the school.’ But he found the behaviour of the boys hard to accept:
… the moral conduct of the prisoners on the Establishment is as good as can be reasonably expected from individuals from such a class. The practice of using profane and other improper language has of late been considerably on the decline owing to the vigilance of some of the Overseers in checking & reporting such misconduct & the certainty of punishment following breaches of the orders in the particular.[16]
He recorded in some detail how:
At Point Puer… there are more than 200 in number who are taken the greatest care of. Education, taught trades [sic] and every attention paid to their morals and though their juvenile past wickedness, which led to their coming to the colony, must be viewed as a great evil, it is one out of which some good appears to arise for many of these urchins were taken from careless, wicked parents or from a state of destitution, in which they were exposed to an accumulation of vice, and in this country they are placed in more favourable circumstances then ever they were…
The missionary at Port Arthur must endure considerable inconvenience arising from local causes… I do not think it would be judicious to give up the station…[17]
The Wesleyans thus remained at Port Arthur through the early changes of the Probation System and the great influx of transportees that came once New South Wales was no longer accepting convicts.
Their duties remained the same: to save souls, to baptise, to teach reading, writing, religion and arithmetic, and to add decorum to the burying of the dead. Their less obvious function was, on behalf of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, to bear witness to the operation of the station where no other outsiders were present, and to be a part of that tiny civilian free community that allowed some normality outside of respective duties.
The few surviving buildings from the era at Port Arthur – and the sites of the virtually non-existent buildings at Point Puer – hide the dramatic ethical events that occurred at both places in the early days of these penal settlements. These events had considerable implications for the colony of Van Diemen’s Land.
As a result of the 1897 bushfires, only about a quarter of the buildings survive at Port Arthur and these are the later structures built of sandstone. Most of those destroyed were from the first phase of the operations of the stations; Port Arthur’s from 1830 to 1842, and Point Puer’s from 1834 until its closure in 1848.
Social reconstruction of the Wesleyans’ role and impact at Port Arthur and Point Puer, although more difficult to portray, is also possible by using archival records plus private journals and newspaper reports. While some officials, (especially Commandant Charles O’Hara Booth and Commissariat Officer Thomas Lemprière) kept private journals, they also all engaged in official correspondence, much of which has survived. The convict records, including those of the Point Puer boys, also remain and are kept in the Tasmanian Archives.
The background to this book
The information on the role of the Wesleyans on the Tasman Peninsula from the start of 1833 to the end of 1843 is based on the author’s initial research while he was Port Arthur Historic Site historian during the 1980s with the Port Arthur Conservation Project (PACP). During that time, a history of Point Puer was drafted for the Point Puer Lads[18], a database devised by Dr Robin McLachlan, then at Sturt University, Bathurst, New South Wales. To this research was added archival records in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, especially those of the Methodist Missionary Society and Miscellaneous Tasmania convict records held there.
Further research on the establishment of Point Puer was undertaken by the author and Nigel Hargreaves which resulted in The Empire’s First Stolen Generation: The First Intake at Point Puer 1834-39.[19] Invaluable sources throughout have been Fred Hooper’s thesis The Point Puer Experiment[20], Dora Heard’s The Journal of Charles O’Hara Booth[21] with its detailed footnotes, and extracts from the journal of Thomas Lemprière[22], Port Arthur’s Commissariat Officer (original manuscript at Mitchell Library, SLNSW). In Hobart, the Methodist records, some of them interpreted by twentieth-century church historian, E.R. Pretyman[23], also exist at both the Tasmanian Archives and the University of Tasmania Archives. Other records are available online, including entries in the Australian Dictionary of Biography[24] and private authors such as evangelical historian, Robert Evans.[25] The National Library of Australia’s Trove[26] newspaper search facility has been a great asset, however, the bulk of research for this book was completed before this resource was available.
Of particular help in reconstructing life at Point Puer and Port Arthur has been family genealogies of the descendants of Point Puer boys. The descendants of the Point Puer lads have added depth and understanding of the long-term impact on the juveniles, their families and the evolving Australian society.
[1] Ely, Richard. 2006 ‘Religion’ in Companion to Tasmanian History – https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/R/Religion.htm – Accessed 15 Nov 2021.
[2] Liardon, Roberts. God’s Generals: John and Charles Wesley – https://bibleandbookcenter.com/read/gods-generals/ – Accessed 15 Nov 2021.
[3] Christianity Today, December 2021, Charles Wesley – https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/poets/charles-wesley.html – Accessed 15 Nov 2021.
[4] Methodism in Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.su/wiki/Methodism – Accessed 15 Nov 2021.
[5] Benson, C. Irving. John Wesley and the beginning of Methodism. The Methodist Publishing House, Horsham, Victoria.
[6] Colgrave, Donald C., 1966: Rev. Benjamin Carvosso (1789 – 1854) ADB, NCB, ANU, – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/carvosso-benjamin-1883 – Accessed 15 Nov 2021.
[7] World (Hobart) 18 October 1920, p3 – 100 years of Methodism.
[8] Woolford, Karen. 2015, Wesley Chapel 175th Anniversary, Hobart, Tasmania 1840 – 2015. Hobart, 8pp.
[9] The North-Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times (Devonport)18 Aug 1915, p4 – Methodism in Australia.
[10] Launceston Examiner (Launceston) 12 July 1897, p6 – The History of Wesleyanism in Tasmania.
[11] Lockley, G.L., 1967, Schofield, William (1793-1878), Schofield – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/schofield-william-2636 – Accessed 15 Nov 2021.
[12] Tuffin, Richard, 2020: December 7; The Convict System – Probation, 1839-53, in Profit and Punishment: Archeological excavation of Port Arthur’s workshops. https://blog.une.edu.au/port-arthur-2020/2020/12/07/the-convict-system-probation-1839-53/ – Accessed 17 Nov 2021.
[13] Maxwell-Stewart, Hamish, 2008, Closing Hell’s Gates: The Death of a Convict Station, Allen & Unwin – http://iccs.arts.utas.edu.au/hellsgates.html – Accessed 16 Nov 2021.
[14] FM4/2408/8, 23 Jun 1837, Manton records, Methodist Missionary Society, Mitchell Library (SLNSW), Sydney.
[15] Manton, John Allen, 1835, Manton Journal extract, (Tasmanian Archives), 13 Aug 1835.
[16] 5/76/1662, 1837. Colonial Secretary’s Office.
[17] FM4/1407-8, 23 June 1837, Methodist Missionary Society, Mitchell Library (SLNSW), Sydney.
[18] McLachlan, Robin and MacFie, Peter H., 1985, The Point Puer Lads Database, National Parks & Wildlife Service & Mitchell CAE, Bathurst, NSW, pp90.
[19] MacFie, Peter & Hargraves, Nigel, 1999, The Empire’s First ‘Stolen Generation’; the First Intake at Point Puer 1834-39. Tasmanian Historical Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2.
[20] Hooper, Fred, 1955: The Point Puer Experiment: Study of the Penal and Educational Treatment of Juvenile Transportees in Van Diemen’s Land 1830-1850, UTAS.
[21] Heard, Dora (ed), 1981, The Journal of Charles O’Hara Booth, Hobart, THRA, pp298.
[22] Lemprière, Thomas J., 1985, Journal of Thomas Lemprière (Translation), Mitchell Library (SLNSW), Sydney. PACP.
[23] Pretyman, Roy (E.R.), Methodist records. (Collected papers), (Tasmanian Archives).
[24] Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU – https://adb.anu.edu.au/ – Accessed 16 Nov 2021.
[25] Evans, Robert, 2000, Early Evangelical Revivals in Australia. Koorong Press, online, pp553.
[26] Trove, National Library of Australia – https://trove.nla.gov.au/ – Accessed 16 Nov 2021.