Guide to the Records of Melanesian Mission (as filmed by the AJCP)

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Summary

Collection number:

M802-M806

Extent:

152 items

Language:

English

Preferred citation:

Acknowledgement of use of this material should refer to the School of Oriental and African Studies. and to the Australian Joint Copying Project.

Items from this collection should include references to the location of the original material and to the AJCP nla.obj number, which serves as the online identifier for the digital copy.

Example: M Series: Welchman to Charlotte Welchman, 5 December 1887, School of Oriental and African Studies (AJCP ref: http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-727917985)

Availability:

Available

Access conditions:

Available for reference.

Background

Content Summary:

The bulk of the collection consists of the correspondence 1887-1896 and diaries 1889-1908 of Rev. Henry Welchman and the correspondence 1952-1953 of C.E. Fox, together with the draft of his book Lord of the Southern Isles.

Other correspondents include J.W. Blencowe 1862-1874, Commodore James G. Goodenough (relating to the annexation of Fiji), Bishop J.C. Patteson and Bishop Edmund Hobhouse 1868-1870 and Miss M. Rice, Oxford 1941-1952. There are also journals of Cole C. Fowler 1889-91, a Mota phrasebook by Florence E. Coombe, sketches and articles by Eric Ramsden, drafts of writings by Rev. George Sarawia, John Still and Roger Ernest Tempest on the history of the Mission, including the work of Bishops G.A. and John R. Selwyn. Finally, there are lists of members of the Mission compiled in 1895, 1924 and 1964, and a number of photographs of Melanesia.

Biographical / Historical:

The Melanesian Mission was founded by George Augustus Selwyn, who was appointed the first Anglican bishop of New Zealand in 1841. He supported the ideal of the 'missionary bishop' and was convinced that missions should be church organisations under episcopal leadership, rather than semi-private societies such as the Church Missionary Society. An error in his letters patent extended his diocese as far as latitude 34degrees N, justifying the journeys that he made from 1847 onwards to the islands north of New Zealand. In 1849 he visited the Loyalty Islands and persuaded five adolescent boys to accompany him back to Auckland, where they attended St John's College. His aim was to give the boys both a general and a religious education so that after a few years they could return to their islands and establish their own schools. By 1860, 152 Melanesians from the Loyalty Islands, Solomon Islands and New Hebrides had attended the mission school in Auckland.

In 1854-55 Selwyn visited England where he raised £10,000 for the endowment of a bishopric and bought a mission vessel, the Southern Cross. On his return to New Zealand he was accompanied by a mission chaplain, John C. Patteson. Selwyn and Patteson made several cruises to the islands on the Southern Cross, but after 1859 Patteson took over responsibility for the mission. In 1861, with the permission of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was consecrated by Selwyn as the first Bishop of Melanesia. The mission was based in Auckland until 1867, when it moved to Norfolk Island. An English Committee was set up in 1872 to represent the interests of the mission in England and to coordinate fund-raising and an office was opened in London in 1899. Until well into the twentieth century, the English Committee contributed over half of the Mission's income.

The missionaries achieved early success at Mota in the Banks Islands and Mota soon became the lingua franca throughout the diocese. Generally, however, the rate of conversions to Christianity was very slow. Patteson was murdered on the island of Nukapu, near Santa Cruz, in 1871, and six years passed before he was succeeded as bishop by John Selwyn, the son of George Selwyn. By the early 1880s the mission had achieved a stronghold on the Ngella Islands in the Solomon Islands, but it took about thirty years to establish missions at Savo, Ysabel, Guadalcanal, Santa Cruz and Malaita. In the New Hebrides an agreement was reached with the Presbyterian Mission in 1881 whereby the Anglicans would concentrate on the northern islands of Omba (Aoba), Maewo and Pentecost. In the early twentieth century New Britain and some of the islands of New Guinea were brought within the Melanesian Mission.

In 1900 the staff of the Mission consisted of 14 European priests, four Melanesian priests and eight Melanesian deacons. Like Selwyn and Patteson, the Europeans were mostly university educated and held High Church convictions. They lived for much of the year on Norfolk Island, spending a few weeks or months on tours of their allotted districts, meeting the Melanesian teachers who had been trained at St Barnabas's College. Henry Welchman was the first missionary to live permanently at his station at Bugotu and after 1900 most of the European missionaries had permanent residences at their mission stations. By 1894, 122 schools had been set up, with 381 teachers, over half of them in the Solomon Islands. At Siota on Ngella Island a junior boarding school for boys was opened in 1894 and a girls' school in 1922. A mission hospital was built at Guadalcanal in 1912 and another was opened at Malaita in 1929.

By the 1920s Melanesian priests outnumbered European priests, although some Europeans, such as Charles Fox, continued working in the diocese well into the second half of the century. In 1920 the diocesan headquarters was transferred from Norfolk Island and St Luke's Cathedral was consecrated in 1928. It was destroyed during the Second World War and the headquarters was subsequently transferred to Honiara on Guadalcanal, although the theological college remained at Siota. The first Melanesian bishops were consecrated in 1963. In 1973 a diocesan conference decided that the diocese should become an independent province, with the right to order its own affairs, appoint bishops, and form new dioceses. The Church of Melanesia was formed in 1975 with four dioceses: Central Melanesia, New Hebrides, Malaita and Ysabel.

Reference: David Hilliard. God's gentlemen: a history of the Melanesian Mission 1849-1942, Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, 1978.

Access and use

Conditions Governing Access:: Available for Access.
Conditions Governing Use:: Many of the records digitised as part of the AJCP are still in copyright. Readers wishing to publish or reproduce documents should seek permission, in the first instance, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London..