Image: WikiCommons
The London Missionary Society (LMS), founded in 1795 to take the gospel to the Heathen[1], did not originally intend to evangelise Hobart. Nevertheless, Hobart became involved by circumstance: initially as a stopover for missionaries en-route to the islands, and later, from 1830, when a Congregational church – planted without an explicit LMS mandate – took root on Brisbane Street.
Although the London Missionary Society was interdenominational in origin, it was largely led and supported by Congregationalists, and its overseas work became closely associated with the spread of Congregationalism.
A Society with other business
G. Lindsay Lockley, surveying Congregational archives in Australia, states the Society’s position plainly: although many early European inhabitants of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land might have counted as heathen, the LMS did not see them as part of its mandate.[2] Colonial Congregationalists, lacking an organised body in Britain to support them, turned to the LMS for assistance.[3]
Lockley describes a pre-history of Congregational activity in the colonies from 1798 to 1830, mostly involving LMS agents who were temporarily resident in New South Wales, either as refugees from the South Pacific or while detained en route to or from the islands.[4] Documentation of this period is found mainly in the Society’s correspondence and reports to London, preserved in the LMS archives, microfilmed for the National Library of Australia, and partly copied in the Mitchell Library in Sydney.[5]
March 1817: Williams at Hobart Town
Image: WikiCommons
According to Niel Gunson’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), the first Evangelical service in Van Diemen’s Land was by John Williams, Robert Bourne, David Darling, and George Platt. As part of the third group of missionaries to arrive in the Pacific islands after Tahiti’s nominal conversion in 1815, they sailed from London in November 1816, and were joined at Rio de Janeiro by the Rev. Lancelot Threlkeld. Arriving in Hobart in March 1817, they ‘held the first Evangelical service conducted in Van Diemen’s Land, Williams defying opposition by preaching in the open air.’[6] Exactly what this opposition was is not clear, yet all the recent sources repeat that single sentence.
The party left Hobart and arrived in Sydney in May and the missionaries were favourably received by Governor Macquarie. Williams, in particular, made a strong impression on Samuel Marsden. The group departed for the Pacific islands in September 1817.[7]
The man himself
John Williams was born on 27 June 1796 at Tottenham High Cross, London.[8] Apprenticed to an ironmonger in 1810, he quickly rose to manage the business. After his Evangelical conversion in 1814, Williams joined the Tabernacle Church, a Calvinistic Methodist congregation—distinct from John Wesley’s Arminian Methodism.[9] Taught by the Rev. Matthew Wilks, he learned grammar and exegesis, [10] volunteered to the LMS in 1816, was ordained at Surrey Chapel on 3 September that year, and married Mary Chauner on 29 October.[11] Remarkably, he was only twenty when ordained and not yet twenty-one when he preached in Hobart Town.
The ADB describes Williams as the most enterprising missionary in the Pacific. During a three-month visit to Sydney in December 1821, he purchased a ship—on his own initiative and with Marsden’s reluctant approval—to facilitate trade between Raiatea and Sydney. He also arranged for Thomas Scott to teach sugar-cane and tobacco cultivation on Raiatea. So impressed was Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane that he supplied stock to the mission and granted Williams magisterial authority for the islands. Williams advocated for the colonies’ responsibility to the Pacific; in a letter to the Sydney Gazette (22 March 1827), he encouraged Australia to thrive economically but warned against neglecting the missionary work God had assigned. He argued that Christianising the islands would also benefit Sydney’s business interests – a blend of piety and commerce that resonated with his audience. [12]
By 1838, Williams had become a public figure. Returning to Sydney in the mission ship Camden, he drew large crowds. He had given evidence to the House of Commons committee on Aborigines, helped establish the local Aborigines Protection Society, and founded an Auxiliary Missionary Society in Sydney.[13]
Image: TAHO PH40-1-1669
He was killed at Erromanga in the New Hebrides on 20 November 1839. Erromangan islanders later said they had killed and eaten both Williams and his companion James Harris, after European visitors had already killed islanders. The colonies received the news with public sorrow, and it gave a new impetus to Australian Congregationalism.[14] A series of mission ships later carried his name. In 2009 his descendants took part in a reconciliation ceremony, and the landing place was renamed Williams Bay. [15]
From Passing Visitors to a Settled Minister
Williams left no church behind in Hobart. The foundation for one was laid instead by a layman: Henry Hopkins (1787–1870) and his wife Sarah, who arrived in 1822. Hopkins, who prospered in wool and ironmongery, is described in the Companion to Tasmanian History as a leading Congregationalist and anti-transportationist. He later commissioned John West’s History of Tasmania.[16]
The Society set up an auxiliary in Hobart Town in 1826, and in 1834 it became the Van Diemen’s Land Home Missionary and Christian Instruction Society.[17] (Lockley calls the 1834 body the V.D.L. Colonial Missionary and Christian Instruction Society, an interdenominational agency so dominated by Congregationalists that it became a denominational body in 1842.[18] While the sources differ on the name; the dates agree.)
In response to the Hopkinses’ request, the Rev. Frederick Miller was sent out from Highbury College, London, in 1830, to become the first settled Independent minister in Australia.[19]
Image TAHO PH40-1-80
A newspaper report of the 1870 Memorial Church foundation-stone ceremony, reproduced on the Ferguson & Urie site, gives 17 October 1830 as the day he began his ministry.[20] The Companion records Miller as born in 1806 in one entry and 1808 in another;[21]
Brisbane Street Hobart.
Image 1890 TAHO PH30-1-1362
He ministered at the Brisbane Street Chapel, built in 1832. Another Chapel was built in Collins St, under the ministry of Rev. James Nesbit in 1836.[23] For 25 years Miller served as secretary of the Bible Society, worked with the Sunday School Union and the Tract Society, established the Bethel Union and originated the Colonial Missions Society.[24]
The LMS faded from the picture as Congregationalism found its own machinery. Lockley notes that the Congregational Union of England and Wales (1832) and the Colonial Missionary Society (1836) removed the need for LMS support, although colonial Congregationalists kept corresponding with the Society for several decades afterwards.[25] The Congregational Union of Van Diemen’s Land followed in 1836 according to the Companion,[26] or 1837 according to Lockley.[27]
Not everyone was wanted
The lineage was not harmonious. The Companion says Miller’s difficulties led to several ministers being sent to assist: John Nisbet, Joseph Beazley, Alexander Morrison, John West and Charles Price. Price arrived in 1832 but ‘was not wanted in Hobart Town’, failed to establish a church in Launceston, and left the island, returning to Launceston in 1836 to run a school and minister until his death. When West arrived in Launceston, his arrival split Price’s Tamar Street congregation and led to the breakaway St John’s Square Chapel in 1839.[28]
Image: TAHO PH30-1-614
What the Governor thought
The nearest thing to documented opposition I have found comes from Governor George Arthur’s side of the story. Biographer M. C. I. Levy says Arthur had a small amount placed on the 1837 Estimates for the Independents, who began in 1830 with Frederick Miller preaching at Dean’s Rooms, opened a chapel with nine members in Brisbane Street in 1832, and opened another in Collins Street in 1837 under the Rev. James Nesbit. That support was given in spite of ‘the objections of the Chief Justice and other equally reflecting and excellent persons, who dreaded help being given to other sects as injurious to the Church.’[29] John Lewes Pedder was Chief Justice at that time.
What is left
Illustrated London News 15 June 1859 p605. Image WikiCommons
The LMS’s Tasmanian footprint is mostly indirect: a famous visitor who preached in the open air, an auxiliary society, a habit of correspondence, and a denominational lineage that runs from the Society’s colonial network to Brisbane Street and the Memorial Church of 1872.[30]
[1] G. Lindsay Lockley, ‘Congregational Archival Material in Australia’, Australian Society of Archivists publications, https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/download/5943/5941
[2] G. Lindsay Lockley, ‘Congregational Archival Material in Australia’, Australian Society of Archivists publications, https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/download/5943/5941
[3] G. Lindsay Lockley, ‘Congregational Archival Material in Australia’, Australian Society of Archivists publications, https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/download/5943/5941
[4] G. Lindsay Lockley, ‘Congregational Archival Material in Australia’, Australian Society of Archivists publications, https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/download/5943/5941
[5] G. Lindsay Lockley, ‘Congregational Archival Material in Australia’, Australian Society of Archivists publications, https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/download/5943/5941
[6] Niel Gunson, ‘Williams, John (1796-1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, Melbourne University Press, 1967, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/williams-john-2793
[7] Niel Gunson, ‘Williams, John (1796-1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, Melbourne University Press, 1967, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/williams-john-2793
[8] Niel Gunson, ‘Williams, John (1796-1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, Melbourne University Press, 1967, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/williams-john-2793
[9] J. D. Walsh, “Wesley vs. Whitefield”, Christian History, issue 38, 1993 (the Whitefield–Wesley split and the Tabernacle’s rivalry with Wesley’s Foundery). Herbert McGonigle, “Whitefield, George”, Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland (the 1741 rift over free grace and the later Wesleyan/Calvinistic split).
[10] Exegesis is the careful interpretation of a text, especially scripture. It means drawing out what the passage meant in its original language, setting and context, rather than reading your own assumptions into it. It’s the opposite of eisegesis, which is reading your own ideas into the text.
[11] Niel Gunson, ‘Williams, John (1796-1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, Melbourne University Press, 1967, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/williams-john-2793
[12] Niel Gunson, ‘Williams, John (1796-1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, Melbourne University Press, 1967, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/williams-john-2793
[13] Niel Gunson, ‘Williams, John (1796-1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, Melbourne University Press, 1967, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/williams-john-2793
[14] Niel Gunson, ‘Williams, John (1796-1839)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, Melbourne University Press, 1967, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/williams-john-2793
[15] ‘November 20: John Williams & Thomas Baker’, Mark the Evangelist (Uniting Church), https://marktheevangelist.unitingchurch.org.au/november-20-john-williams-thomas-baker/ Sholto Byrnes, ‘Cannibals Apologise’, New Statesman, 7 December 2009, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2009/12/williams-erromango-islanders (accessed 1 October 2026)
[16] James Alexander, ‘Henry Hopkins’, Companion to Tasmanian History, Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/H/Henry%20Hopkins.htm
[17] Patricia Ratcliff, ‘Congregationalism’, Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Congregationalism.htm
[18] G. Lindsay Lockley, ‘Congregational Archival Material in Australia’, Australian Society of Archivists publications, https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/download/5943/5941
[19] Patricia Ratcliff, ‘Congregationalism’, Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Congregationalism.htm ; [9] Marion Dowsett, ‘Miller Family’, Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Miller%20family.htm
[20] ‘Frederick Miller’, Ferguson & Urie, https://fergusonandurie.com/tag/frederick-miller/
[21] Patricia Ratcliff, ‘Congregationalism’, Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Congregationalism.htm ; Marion Dowsett, ‘Miller Family’, Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Miller%20family.htm
[22] ‘Frederick Miller’, Ferguson & Urie, https://fergusonandurie.com/tag/frederick-miller/
[23] M. C. I. Levy, Governor George Arthur: A Colonial Benevolent Despot (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1953), p 192.
[24] Marion Dowsett, ‘Miller Family’, Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Miller%20family.htm
[25] G. Lindsay Lockley, ‘Congregational Archival Material in Australia’, Australian Society of Archivists publications, https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/download/5943/5941
[26] Patricia Ratcliff, ‘Congregationalism’, Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Congregationalism.htm
[27] G. Lindsay Lockley, ‘Congregational Archival Material in Australia’, Australian Society of Archivists publications, https://publications.archivists.org.au/index.php/asa/article/download/5943/5941
[28] Patricia Ratcliff, ‘Congregationalism’, Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Congregationalism.htm
[29] M. C. I. Levy, Governor George Arthur: A Colonial Benevolent Despot (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1953), p 192.
[30] Marion Dowsett, ‘Miller Family’, Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006, https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Miller%20family.htm
