Barzillai Quaife

Barzillai Quaife (29 December 1798 – 3 March 1873) was an English-born editor, Congregational and Presbyterian minister, bookseller and teacher active in both Australia and New Zealand. He was a fierce advocate for the rights of the Māori.

Life

Born at Lenham in Kent, Quaife was the son of a farmer, Thomas Quaife, and his wife, Amelia Austin. He entered the Hoxton Academy in London in 1824; later he served as a teacher and minister in Collompton, Devon, and St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, among other locations. In 1835 Quaife submitted a "Plan to provide the New Settlement of South Australia with the means of Religious instruction on the Congregational principle" to the South Australian Colonization Commissioners; he was not, however, appointed under this plan, nor was he allowed to serve when he applied again in 1836.

Quaife ministered to this group until 1850, in which year Dr. Lang reopened the Australian College and appointed him to the faculty as a professor of mental philosophy and divinity. He became a foundation member of two synods, that of New South Wales in 1850 and of the reunited ones in 1865. The college's work was restricted in 1852, at which point his teaching position lapsed. He lived again in Parramatta between 1853 and 1855. In the latter year Quaife went to Paddington teaching school while ministering to a congregation at home. 1863 saw reconciliation with Congregational leaders, from whom he had become estranged, and he was invited to train three of their students for the ministry. He closed his school and brought his congregation into the Ocean Street Congregational Church in Woollahra. He tutored his three students until September 1864; in October they were transferred to the then-new Camden College. Quaife did not receive a teaching position at the school, which omission hurt him deeply. Ill health at this point forced him to withdraw from professional work until his death.

Quaife died in Woollahra in 1873.

Personal life

On 4 November 1834, Quaife married Maria Smith in Westminster; they had four sons, two of whom survived infancy. Maria Quaife died in January 1857, and on 29 May of that year Quaife married Eliza Buttrey, with whom he had two children, a son and a daughter. Two of his sons, Frederick Harrison Quaife and William Francis Quaife, went on to become noted physicians in the Sydney area. A granddaughter, Viola Austral Quaife, married Sydney Ure Smith in 1909.

Selected publications

A condensed view of the proper design and uses of the Lord's Supper (1845) The Rules of the Final Judgment (1846) Lectures on Prophecy and the Kingdom of Christ (1848) The Intellectual Sciences, vols 1-2 (1872)

This last was composed of lectures from the Australian College, and has been claimed as the first serious work of philosophy to be published in Australia. Quaife also contributed articles to many publications, including the Atlas, the People's Advocate, the Press, the Empire, and the Illawarra Mercury; he edited the Christian Standard in 1849 and both forms of the Christian Pleader between 1858 and 1864.

Notes and references