Samuel Leigh

Samuel Leigh (1 September 1785 – 2 May 1852) was a prominent minister and missionary for the Wesleyan Methodist Church in early colonial New South Wales and New Zealand. Born in England, he went to Australia in 1815 and established the first Wesleyan circuit in New South Wales. He first visited New Zealand in 1819 at the behest of Samuel Marsden. After that visit, he went back to England and proposed the establishment of a Wesleyan Missionary Society (WMS) mission for the Māori people of the country. Newly married, he returned to New Zealand in 1822 to establish the first WMS mission there, at Kaeo, near Whangaroa Harbour. He left in August 1823 on account of his poor health and returned to Sydney where he worked in the Australian ministry, until 1831, the year that his wife died. He returned to England the following year, working in the ministry there for the next several years and remarrying. He retired in 1845 and moved to Reading, where he died on 2 May 1852 at the age of 66. Early life Born in Milton, in the Staffordshire county of England, on 1 September 1785, Samuel Leigh was the son of an engineer, Matthew Leigh. His education was limited and he was raised in the Congregational church. Desiring to become a minister, he trained at a seminary at Gosport, under David Bogue. Disagreeing with the severe Calvinistic teachings of Bogue, he decided to become a minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Initially an assistant to the Reverend Joseph Sutcliffe at Portsmouth, he spent two years on the Shaftesbury circuit before he was ordained in 1814. He intended to perform missionary work of behalf of the Wesleyan Missionary Society (WMS). He was selected to go to Montreal in Canada, in response to a request from missionaries there. This was then canceled and Leigh was instead dispatched to New South Wales, in Australia, in February 1815. Service in Australia On 10 August 1815, Leigh arrived in Sydney aboard the Hebe. He initially began preaching at the Rocks, where there was already a Wesleyan presence. He soon moved to a rural location, at Castlereagh, and by 1817, the first Methodist church in Australia had been built there with Leigh opening it in October that year. Further religious facilities were opened in the locations of Parramatta, Liverpool and at Windsor; at the latter, he laid the first foundation stone to commence the construction of a chapel there.