Pioneer MNC minister in Australia, he was born in October 1826 at Hebburn, Co. Durham, into a poor family. After only a few years' schooling he went down the mine. He was converted, became a MNC local preacher in 1844 and in 1848 was appointed to the Bradford Circuit. After 14 years in English circuits he was sent to Australia in 1862, arrived in Melbourne in May and held his first service in Adelaide on 21 December that year. His successful ministry there led to the building of Franklin Street church in 1864; it became the first Central Methodist Mission in Adelaide in 1900. Conservative in his theology and earnestly evangelical in his preaching, he was a good preacher and organizer. He had a lively interest in science (especially chemistry) and philosophy and won a prize for an essay on diseases in wheat. Debilitated by a chest disease, he died on 8 March 1871 and is commemorated in the name of the church which replaced the earlier Franklin Street church in 1965.