Thomas Samuel Grace

Thomas Samuel Grace

Agnes Grace, his wife

Thomas Samuel Grace (born February 16, 1815 in Liverpool , † April 30, 1879 in Tauranga ) was a British missionary in New Zealand .

Early life

Thomas Samuel Grace was born in Liverpool on February 16, 1815 . His father was John Grace and his mother was his wife Sarah Lawrence Cox.

After briefly attending a grammar school , he ran a trading company in his hometown in the 1820s. The economic success allowed him to support his parents. He became interested in missionary work and in 1844 offered the Church Missionary Society his participation. He acquired the necessary knowledge at his own expense, first privately and from August 1846 at St Bee's Theological College.

In June 1848 he became a deacon of Tideswell in the county of Derbyshire ordained . In June 1849 he was ordained a priest .

New Zealand

On February 11, 1850, Grace traveled to New Zealand on the ship Fairy Queen with his wife and two children . They arrived in Auckland on July 9th . Actually he was supposed to found a new mission station in Taupo . Since the head of the mission there, Reverend William Williams, was abroad, he was instead sent to Turanga on Poverty Bay from October 1850 to 1853 to represent the latter. While Williams advocated a rapid amalgamation of the Māori with the Europeans, Grace saw them in a much more independent role. He spoke out against the sale of their land and encouraged them to develop a more progressive economy, so they should demand fair prices for their products, use money instead of bartering, build and operate ships themselves and make agriculture more efficient, for example by using the plow .

In 1854 Grace was back in Auckland. There he published an anonymously printed circular in Māori called Ko etahi patai ki te hunga Maori mo te hoko wenua ( some questions to the Māori regarding the sale of land ), printed in 250 copies (of which only a few came into circulation ). This advises the Māori to keep their land and justifies this with quotations from the Bible . This advice, which was not very popular with the settlers, led to complaints to Colonial Secretary Andrew Sinclair and an official investigation. While the CMS committee in London was positive about his views but not the way he pursued them, his fellow missionaries in New Zealand distanced themselves from him.

Grace went back to building the mission at Taupo. During explorations in the 1853/54, Pukawa was chosen as the best location. The chief of the Ngati Tuwharetoa , Iwikau Te Heuheu Tukino III , provided 70 acres of land. Grace and his family arrived there on April 19, 1855 after a long journey. Due to the lack of roads, the luggage from Tarawera had to be carried by numerous porters.

When the first mission house burned down on May 24, 1856, it was replaced by a two-story one. A boarding school, a commercial school and residential buildings completed the station. The remote station regularly suffered from supply difficulties and food shortages, as the supplies continued to rely on imports from Europe. Grace encouraged sheep farming. He also procured spinning and weaving machines from Europe so that the natives could further process the wool. The latter was prevented by the outbreak of war.

In 1856, Grace was accused of encouraging the Kīngitanga , who came up with an independent Māori kingship. The politician Donald McLean tried to get his dismissal through the colonial administration at the CMS in London. However, Grace was also heard beforehand and Grace was unable to provide evidence that he was more likely to oppose it. However, he blamed the government's policies for the outbreak of war in Taranaki. After the protector of the mission, Iwikau Te Heuheu Tukino III, died and Horonuku Te Heuheu Tukino IV became, parts of the previously neutral Māori of Taupo switched to the side of the Kīngitanga of the Waikato tribes. Growing insecurity forced Grace to leave Pukawa with his family on October 8, 1863.

Grace was one of the few missionaries who worked among the Māori outside of the predominantly coastal European settlement areas and mission stations. His mission trips inland went from Auckland until 1872, then from Tauranga. Several times he barely got away with his life. So with the Völkner Incident : In March 1865 he accompanied Carl Sylvius Völkner back to his mission in Opotiki , although the latter was warned not to do so, since the Māori had defected to the new religion Pai Marire there . Völkner was killed by the Māori, Grace managed to escape 16 days later with the help of a European settler on the warship Eclipse sent to aid from Auckland . In 1867 he was able to evade a meeting with Te Kooti . He escaped an ambush at Pukawa that the natives had set up in retaliation for deaths at Rangiaowhia .

Grace arranged for a letter to be printed on Māori Nga minita i roto i te whawhai ( The Pastors Involved in the War ), edited by Archdeacon R. Maunsell . This rejected the allegations made against the clergy in the armed conflicts. According to them, the clergy promoted illegal land acquisition by the Europeans and spied on the Māori for the government.

Grace had contacts with the supporters of the Pai Marire. He saw in this new religion, which also embraced Christian concepts, the Māori striving for autonomy in religious questions. During the CMS efforts of Grace to involve the Māori in the administration of the church lands, their goal of establishing a Māori church of their own was shared by Grace. The post of Māori bishop, which he advocated, came into being more than half a century later. He also planned to start a school to raise a leadership elite among the natives.

From June 1875 to the end of 1876 Grace stayed in England. The CMS agreed to the reconstruction of the Taupo mission station, which, after his introduction, his son Thomas Grace junior would continue to run. Thomas Grace died on April 30, 1879 at the age of 64 in Tauranga.

family

Grace married Agnes Fearon on July 23, 1845 in Whitehaven . The couple had 12 children. Including:

• Thomas Samuel Grace Jr. was archdeacon in Marlborough
• Alfred Augustus Grace wrote the history of the Māori ("Tales of a dying race" (1901); "Folk Tales of the Maori" (1907))
• Lawrence Marshall Grace became active in processes for land rights of Māori as a lawyer and an interpreter, Kahui, sister married the chief and member of the Legislative Council Te Heuheu Tukino V .
• Daughter Lilly Grace died on June 11, 1854 at the age of 2.5 years and is buried in St. Stephens Cemetery in Parnesll, Auckland.

literature

• Thomas Samuel Grace, SJ Brittan; GF, CW, and AV Grace : A Pioneer Missionary among the Maoris 1850-1879 . Being Letters and Journals of Thomas Samuel Grace . GH Bennet & Co. , Palmerston North 1928 ( online [accessed October 9, 2017]).
• Helga Neubauer: Grace, Thomas Samuel (1815-1879) . In: The New Zealand Book . 1st edition. NZ Visitor Publications , Nelson 2003, ISBN 1-877339-00-8 , pp. 1086 f .

Web links

• Janet E. Murray: Grace, Thomas Samuel. In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, October 2, 2013, accessed February 23, 2016 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Rev. Thomas Samuel Grace . In: The Cyclopedia of New Zealand . Nelson, Marlborough and Westland Provincial District - Volume V . Cyclopedia Company Ltd , Christchurch 1906, p.  332 (English, online [accessed February 23, 2016]).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Janet E. Murray: Grace, Thomas Samuel. In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, October 2, 2013, accessed February 23, 2016 .  
3. ^ ^{A b c} Neubauer: Grace, Thomas Samuel (1815-1879) . In: The New Zealand Book . 2003, p. 1086 f .
4. ^ [National Library of New Zealand St Stephens churchyard, Parnell, Auckland: headstone transcriptions]