John Fairfax was the founder of the Sydney Morning Herald. He helped to establish Pitt Street Congregational Church and became their senior deacon and Sunday School superintendent.
John Fairfax was born in Warwick, England. He arrived in Sydney in 1838 with 5 pounds in his pocket.
Fairfax purchased and renamed the Sydney Herald in 1841. His family would control the paper for almost 150 years. It was said that he based his editorial policy upon principles of "candour, honesty and honour."
John Fairfax admitted his sons to partnership as the circulation of the newspaper grew. When he died in 1877, his two surviving sons carried on the Herald.
The more prominent of these was Sir James Reading Fairfax (1834-1919), whose three eldest sons joined John Fairfax & Sons Ltd. His only daughter, Mary Elizabeth Fairfax (1858-1945) was a philanthropist and women's leader, and a regular worshipper at Woollahra Congregational Church. His third son, Sir James Oswald Fairfax, (1863-1928) was the father of Warwick Fairfax, who launched an unsuccessful bid for the business in 1987.
John Pascoe Fawkner (1792−1869) was one of Melbourne’s founding fathers, and Treasurer of Melbourne’s first Congregational church.
At the age of nine, Fawkner accompanied his convict father to Van Dieman’s Land. Over the next thirty years, he was jailed and bound over, but in 1911 he was granted 50 acres of farm land.
Fawkner worked as a baker, sold liquor and carried sawn timber. In 1824 he built a brick house and opened this as the Cornwall Hotel. He appeared in lower courts as a bush lawyer for a fee of 6 shillings. He managed a horticultural nursery and ran a coach service between Launceston and Longford. In 1828 he started the Launceston Advertiser, where he argued the causes of the emancipists and attacked capital punishment in a colony that “valued a man’s life less than a sheep’s.”
In 1835, Fawkner engaged a vessel which sailed to Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, and made camp on the Yarra. Still having difficulties with the law, Fawkner joined the group two months later.
He opened Melbourne’s first hotel on the corner of William St and Flinders Lane, and Melbourne’s first Congregational worship was held in the hotel’s main room.
In 1838 he began the Melbourne Advertiser, handwriting his copy until a press and type arrived from Tasmania, but the paper was suppressed because Fawkner had no license. The next year he obtained one, and began the Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser. He opened a bookselling and stationery business. He obtained 780 acres of land and called his property Pascoe Vale.
Fawkner became a market commissioner, a local councillor, and then, in 1851, a member of Legislative Council. He held the seat of the Central Province of Victoria for the rest of his life. During his seventeen years in parliament Fawkner spoke often; one member claimed that he made the same speech for 15 years. Fawkner opposed legislation which he felt protected the privileged sheep-farming squatters, and strongly supported small farmers. After the opening of the goldfields in 1851, he became involved with gold-mining problems and sat on 96 select committees.
In his last parliamentary sessions Fawkner opposed manhood suffrage, the secret ballot and payment for parliamentarians, but supported divorce laws and the rights of women. By then he was an institution, cantankerous and dogmatic but respected for his integrity. He attended every parliamentary session, wearing a cloak and a velvet smoking cap. He died in 1869.
John Speechly Gotch (1829−1901) was co-founder of Gordon and Gotch, Australia’s largest independent magazine distributor.
Gotch left Liverpool for Philadelphia and New York in 1849 to learn about the manufacture of artificial teeth, but heard of the Victorian gold rush. He survived ship-wreck to arrive at Castlemaine, but found no gold. He was then offered a job selling papers and running up advertisements by Alexander Gordon, a stall-holder at the Western Markets.
The partners competed to meet English ships, and distribute London newspapers and magazines through the colony. Their company grew; they opened branches across Australia and overseas. Gordon & Gotch is now part of the PMP group.
John Speechly Gotch worshipped at East Melbourne Congregational Church.
Henry Hopkins (1787−1870) is often described as the founder of Australian Congregationalism. He paid to bring the first Congregational ministers to Hobart and Melbourne, and contributed generously to Congregational churches.
Hopkins was brought up a Congregationalist in Deptford, England. He sailed for Hobart in 1822. On arrival he opened a small shop in Elizabeth St and became a wool buyer, exporting the entire produce of the colony, 12 bales, to London in that year.
Hopkins traded in wool and purchased properties in Victoria and Tasmania to breed merinos. In 1835 he built Westella, the beautiful Georgian townhouse which still stands in Elizabeth St, Hobart, close to the CBD.
Hopkins became chairman of a number of companies.
After his arrival in Australia, Hopkins had taught in the Wesleyan Sunday School and worshipped as a Presbyterian, but he missed Congregational worship. In 1828 he wrote to the London Missionary Society requesting a pastor and offering him a home. Rev Frederick Miller arrived two years later and the Brisbane Street Chapel was built in Hobart.
Hopkins gave land for the Berea Chapel in Liverpool St Hobart in 1837, built the Collins St Chapel in Hobart, and provided half the cost of the Davey St Congregational Church Hobart. He supported many country Congregational churches.
In 1837 Hopkins paid for a minister to be sent to Melbourne, and in 1839 laid the foundation stone of the first Congregational church at the corner of Russell and Collins Streets. John Pascoe Fawkner’s name was inscribed on the stone as Treasurer. In 1866 Hopkins laid the foundation stone of the present building.
Hopkins’ gifts to Congregationalism included donations to the London Missionary Society, Camden College, Sydney and Memorial Church, Hobart. Ecumenical in his outlook, although a committed Congregationalist, he gave generously too to the building funds of Presbyterian and Wesleyan churches and to St David’s Cathedral, Hobart.
David Jones (1783−1872) was a businessman and founder of David Jones Ltd in Sydney, known for its advertising slogan, “There’s no other store like David Jones”.
The company claims to be not only Australia’s oldest department store, but the oldest department store in the world which is still trading under its original name.
David Jones was born in Wales. In 1828 he married his third wife, Jane Hall, whose family were Independents and were very interested in the London Missionary Society.
In 1834 Jones and his family sailed for Sydney. Here he went into retail partnership to form Appleton & Jones. Congregational businessmen acted as their London agents. From 1838 Jones traded under his own name.
Having survived the depression of the 1840s, David Jones retired, but returned several years later to take over management of the business when bankruptcy threatened. He finally retired in 1868.
David Jones was known as a businessman of integrity, and a kind and pleasant man. For 35 years he was a deacon at Pitt Street Congregational Church and he was one of the founders of Camden College. He died in Sydney in 1873.
Sidney Kidman (1857−1935), “the Cattle King”, was an Australian pastoralist. He left home at 13 with 5 shillings and a one-eyed horse to work as a drover and began to supply services and goods to the mining towns of NSW and SA.
In his mid-twenties Kidman bought a 1/14 share in the Broken Hill Proprietary mine for 10 bullocks. In 1886 he purchased Owen Springs station to run cattle and began to extend his holdings. By WWI he was a millionaire.
Kidman eventually owned over 100 cattle stations which covered 3% of the area of Australia. He raised cattle on remote stations in the north, and brought them through his own land to the south for sale, providing good feed and water on the way, so that they arrived in peak condition.
S Kidman and Co today remains the largest private landholder in Australia.
John Ramsay (1841−1924) was the manufacturer of Kiwi boot polish. A New Zealander, he established his factory in Elizabeth St, Melbourne, with his sons John and James.
Kiwi dark tan was the first stain polish, which restored colour to faded leather as well as polishing and preserving. During World War I the polish was used on the boots of Australian, British and, later, American soldiers. By 1918, thirty million tins of polish had been sold.
John Ramsay was a prominent Congregational lay preacher, conducted a bible class for the YMCA, and spoke on the Yarra Bank.
INTERNATIONAL:
Katherine Lee Bates (1859−1925) wrote the words of ‘America the Beautiful’ which is sung at the inauguration of all Presidents of the USA.
She was the daughter of a Congregational minister and a professor of English literature at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.
Inspired by a trip to Colorado and the view from Pikes Peak in 1893, she wrote:
O beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea.
The poem first appeared in print in The Congregationalist on Independence Day 1895.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806−1861) and Robert Browning (1812−1889) were English Victorian poets. Robert Browning was best known for his dramatic monologues.
Elizabeth Barrett was born in Durham, the eldest of 12 children. The Barrett family was part Creole and had lived in Jamaica where they owned sugar plantations. They were Congregationalists.
As a teenager Elizabeth read Shakespeare, Milton, the principal Greek and Latin authors and Dante in their original languages. She studied Hebrew and read the Old Testament from beginning to end.
In 1824, one of London’s leading newspapers, The Globe and Traveller printed her poem, ‘Stanza on the Death of Lord Byron.’ Elizabeth moved to Wimpole Street, London, and was introduced to the celebrities of the literary world, including Wordsworth, Coleridge and Tennyson.
Following the death of her brother Edward in a sailing accident in 1840, Elizabeth became an invalid and recluse, battling depression and guilt, and morphine addiction. During her recovery she wrote poetry, read widely and conducted an enormous correspondence.
Robert Browning wrote to Elizabeth in 1844, admiring her poetry. The couple met in 1845, and their courtship, conducted in secret because of Elizabeth’s father’s hostility, began.
In 1846, Elizabeth and Robert eloped and left for Italy. Elizabeth’s father disinherited her. She died in Florence in 1861.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s best-known works are Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) and the verse-novel Aurora Leigh (1857).
Robert Browning was born in London, the son of an abolitionist father with a library of 6,000 books, and a mother who was musically gifted and a devout Congregationalist.
Like Elizabeth Barrett, Browning was a linguist who became fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin while still a teenager. He became an admirer of the romantic poets, especially Shelley.
Robert stated later in life that “Italy was my university.” However following Elizabeth’s death in 1861 he returned to London where he became part of the literary scene and received recognition in 1868 for his long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book, which was published in four volumes.
Robert Browning died in Venice in 1889, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Calvin Coolidge (1872−1933) was the 30th president of the USA. He regularly rates near the top of lists of worst American presidents.
He was known as ‘Silent Cal’ for his taciturn manner at social functions. It was said that a young woman seated next to him at a dinner, said to him, "Mr. Coolidge, I've made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you." Coolidge replied, "You lose."
When Calvin Coolidge had listened to a sermon on sin, somebody asked him what the preacher had said. He replied, “He said he was against it.”
When she was told that Coolidge had died, Dorothy Parker asked, “How could they tell?”
Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was an English soldier (“Old Ironsides”) and political leader who helped to defeat the Royalists in the English Civil War and, following the execution of Charles I in 1649, dominated the Commonwealth of England, conquered Ireland and Scotland, and ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death five years later.
After undergoing a religious conversion in his 30s, Cromwell became a Puritan and Independent. His religious beliefs were central in his life.
He is a controversial historical figure, being seen both as a regicidal dictator and a hero of freedom. His signature is third on the death warrant of Charles I. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, his corpse was dug up from his grave in Westminster Abbey and abused.
His actions against Irish Catholics have been seen as genicidal, and he is hated still in Ireland, where a traditional curse is “malacht Cromail ort,” “The curse of Cromwell upon you.” In England he is remembered for the Roundheads’ destruction of religious statuary. Under his protectorate, Jews were readmitted to England. In a BBC poll in 2002, he was voted one of the top ten Britons of all time.
When discussing his portrait, Cromwell asked not to be flattered, but to be painted “warts and all.” He is remembered too for his appeal to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, urging them to reconsider the royal alliance, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
Jonathan Edwards (1703−1758) was a philosophical theologian and minister in Massachusetts. He began The Great Awakening, a religious revival in UK and New England, in the 1730s and 1740s.
His work is an expression of the absolute sovereignty of God and the beauty of God’s holiness. His most famous sermon, ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’, was preached on July 8, 1741 in Enfield, Connecticut.
His preaching is immortalized in Robert Lowell’s poem, ‘Mr Edwards and the Spider.’
On Windsor Marsh, I saw the spider die
When thrown into the bowels of fierce fire:
There’s no long struggle, no desire
To get up on its feet and fly—
It stretches out its feet
And dies. This is the sinner’s last retreat;
Yes, and no strength exerted on the heat
Then sinews the abolished will, when sick
And full of burning, it will whistle on a brick.
Sir Titus Salt and William Hesketh Lever (later Lord Leverhulme) were nineteenth century British Congregational industrialists who contributed to town planning by building ideal villages for their workers.
In 1888, William Hesketh Lever built the village of Port Sunlight in Merseyside, England, using nearly thirty architects, for the workers in his Lever Brothers soap factory, which is now part of Unilever.
The village contained 800 houses, each one unique, as well as public buildings, including an art gallery, theatre, hall, school and church.
In 1853, Sir Titus Salt founded the village of Saltaire in Bradford, West Yorkshire. He moved his five woollen mills to the town, and built a hospital, library, concert hall, billiard room , science laboratory and gymnasium for his employees, as well as stone houses. The village is now a World Heritage site.
Sir Titus died in 1876 and was buried in the mausoleum next to Saltaire Congregational Church.
David Livingstone (1813–1873) was a Scottish medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and explorer in Central Africa.
He was the first European to see Mosi-oa-Tunya, which he named the Victoria Falls. His meeting with H. M. Stanley gave rise to the popular quotation, “Dr Livingstone I presume?”
The members of the colonial Massachusetts legislature founded Harvard University in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; they were Congregationalists.
Initially called "New College" or "the college at New Towne", Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Its original purpose was the training of Puritan ministers.
The university was named Harvard College on March 13, 1639, after a young clergyman named John Harvard who bequeathed the College his library of four hundred books and £779, half of his estate.
The unofficial mascot of Harvard University is the head of a Puritan, supposedly John Harvard, with the word “Crimson” (the University’s colour) above it.
Increase Mather (1639−1723) was a Puritan minister and a major figure in the history of Massachusetts.
He was President of Harvard University, and was involved in the Salem witch trials. Mather wrote in Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits, “It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned.” He later, however, refused to denounce the trials.
He married his step-sister Maria Cotton and named his son Cotton Mather.
John Milton (1608−1674) is arguably the greatest English poet after William Shakespeare.
William Wordsworth wrote of him:
Milton! Thou should’st be living at his hour;
England hath need of thee; she is a fen
Of stagnant waters . . .
Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
Milton’s greatest poetic work is Paradise Lost.
His most moving poem however, is ‘On His Blindness,’ a sonnet written in 1652, a year after he became totally blind. The poem begins,
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless . . .
It ends,
They also serve who only stand and wait.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791−1872), was inventor of Morse Code.
An American, he was a fine artist, a member of the British Royal Academy, and inventor of the single wire telegraph.
Morse was a leader in the New York anti-Catholic and anti-immigration movement of the mid-19th century. He believed that the Austrian government was subsidizing Catholic immigration to USA in order to take over the country.
His portrait appears on the reverse of the U.S. 1896 $2 note.
James Pierpont (1659−1714) founded Yale University in 1701 with a group of 9 fellow Congregational ministers, all of whom had attended Harvard.
Originally Yale was called the Collegiate School of Connecticut and opened in the home of its first rector in Killingworth, now Clinton. The college moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1718. The college name was changed to Yale College after Elihu Yale, a Welshman, donated nine bales of goods worth £560, 417 books and a portrait of George I.
Pierpont’s daughter, Sarah, married Jonathan Edwards. His descendants include the U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr and the financier J. P. Morgan.
Pictured is the Old Campus, Yale.
The Pilgrim Fathers left Leiden, the Netherlands, for America in 1620 and settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts. They formed the first permanent colony in New England, and the second in America.
These 35 members of the English Separatist church, Congregationalists, were seeking religious freedom. Their journey was financed by a London stock company, and the remainder of the 102 people on board the ‘Mayflower’ were hired to protect the company’s interests.
Originally the group planned to settle in Virginia, and applied to the Virginia Company for a grant of land there. They landed in Massachusetts because they were blown off course.
On arrival the Pilgrim Fathers drew up the Mayflower Compact which ensured rights for all settlers. The Congregationalist John Carver, who had been a deacon at the Leyden church, was elected first governor of Massachusetts; when he died a year late, William Bradford, another Congregationalist, took up the position and held it for 35 years.
Although 45 of the original passengers died in the first winter, friendly native Americans taught the colonists woodcraft, trapping, hunting, how to make maple sugars, moccasins and birch-bark canoes, and how to raise maize and tobacco. They introduced the colonists to eating turkey.
Only 53 people, 4 of them women, were alive by November 1621; they celebrated the first Thanksgiving. The Congregationalists in this group became the founding fathers of American Congregationalism.
In the next few years more Congregationalists made the trip to America; by 1630 they had established the Massachusetts Bay Company and founded the town of Boston.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811−1896) was the author of the abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Following publication of the book, she became a celebrity, speaking against slavery both in America and Europe.
When Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published, Harriet Beecher Stowe was the mother of seven children. Stowe helped to support her family financially by writing for local and religious periodicals.
During her life, she wrote poems, travel books, biographical sketches, and children's books, as well as nine more adult novels. She met and corresponded with people as varied as Lady Byron, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and George Eliot.
Isaac Watts (1674−1748) is known as The Father of English Hymnody. As well as writing more than 600 hymns, he was an Independent pastor and preacher, and published books of poetry and theological discourses.
Watts was born in Southampton and brought up an Independent; his father had twice been gaoled for his religious views.
From 1700–01 Isaac Watts was Lord Mayor of London.
From early childhood Isaac Watts was fascinated by verse. Once when he was asked why he had his eyes open during prayers, he replied, “A little mouse for want of stairs / Ran up a rope to say its prayers.” For this statement he was spanked. He then said, “O father, do some pity take / And I will no more verses make.” What happened next was not reported.
Watts’ best-loved hymns include ‘All People that on Earth Do Dwell’ (#1, Congregational Praise), ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ (#131 CP), ‘Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun’ (#158 CP), ‘How Pleased and Blest Was I’ (#238 CP) and ‘Joy to the World’ (#224 Australian Hymn Book).
Next: Chapter 23. Jim Downing
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