The commemoration of 2022 as the bicentennial of the Methodist Church in New Zealand rests on the shoulders of the Rev Samuel Leigh.

The first Wesleyan missionary in Australia in 1815, on a return trip to England, Leigh urged the Wesleyan Church to let him lead a mission to New Zealand. Leigh and his wife Catherine, reached the Bay of Islands on 22 January 1822. Warfare meant the Leighs remained with the Anglican Church Missionary Society until June 1823 when they sailed to Whangaroa Harbour. The first Wesleyan service given to Maori was held there on Sunday 10 June 1823. The first Wesleyan mission station was established at Kaeo after May 1823. It was called Wesleydale.

A small number of letters written by the Rev Leigh are held within the records of the Wesleyan Missionary Society relating to the New Zealand Wesleyan mission. These letters and more can be read via the TROVE website: www.nla.gov.au/nla.obj-742488699/findingaid . Typescripts of many of these documents are held in the Methodist Archives (our catalogue reference MS-39) and our inventory of these can be viewed on the Methodist Church website: www.methodist.org.nz/whakapapa/archives/archives-collection/personal-papers/

There are some other documents associated with Samuel Leigh within the Methodist Archives collection. These letters are part of the Rev Wesley Chambers’ collection of documents and research for his books on the history of the Methodist Church in New Zealand.

Rev Chambers came across reference to a bundle of letters in 1952 when English Methodist minister, the Rev Leslie F Church, wrote in a newsletter that he had been reading some old missionary letters from New Zealand before putting them in the wastepaper basket. Chambers wrote to Church asking if he could have any other letters that he might be throwing away. The letters were retrieved from the wastepaper basket and sent to Chambers.

Two of the documents relate directly to Leigh’s mission to New Zealand.

The first is the yearly circular of missionary notices for 1821 which included instructions from the Wesleyan Missionary Society to its missionaries. This circular was addressed to “Revd Saml Leigh, Wesleyan Missionary New Zealand, care of Revd Geo Erskine, Sydney, New South Wales”.

A letter to Catherine Leigh from her friend in London in 1822 offers the reassurance, “I could not think of letting slip this opportunity of sending you a few lines to let you know that we do not forget you.” Catherine Leigh might be on the other side of the world but her friends still thought of her.

The other letters are from a later date and include two written by Rev Leigh to his second wife Elizabeth in 1851 after they were back in England.

In 1992, Wesley Chambers summed up his thoughts on the Leigh letters to Verna Mossong, genealogist and archivist at the Auckland Methodist Archives, saying that they were not of great historical importance but they did give some sidelights on Samuel Leigh, his wives and circle of friends in 19th century Methodism. “I think something of Leigh’s character comes through. We think of Leigh as a younger man in full vigour; these relate to his closing years.”

Leigh was in New Zealand a comparatively short time; he left Kaeo on 19 August 1823 to return to Australia. Catherine Leigh died in May 1831 and Leigh returned to England, remarrying in 1842 and dying in 1852.

Jo Smith, Methodist Church of NZ Archives