BURGESS, Henry Thomas (1839-1923)

BURGESS, HENRY THOMAS (b. Sandbach, Cheshire, England, 27 Mar 1839, d. Adelaide, SA, 19 NOV 1923). Methodist minister.

The Burgess family migrated to South Australia in 1848 and settled in the mining town of Burra. Henry Burgess attended the local public school and then worked for some years in a store, first in Burra and later at Mount Barker. In 1859 at the age of 20 he was accepted as a probationary minister by the Wesleyan Methodist Church and appointed to Yankalilla, a rural centre south of Adelaide.

Burgess soon developed into a preacher of outstanding ability. In his active ministry which lasted until 1902 he served in most of the major pulpits within the Wesleyan church in SA. At the same time he was chosen for high office in the church as a whole. He was president of the Wesleyan Conference in SA in 1880 and 1890 and of the General (inter-colonial) Conference in 1897-1901. In the latter capacity he represented the church at the inaugural celebrations of the Commonwealth of Australia.

In the 1890s Burgess made a major contribution in bringing about Methodist Union in South Australia. In the colony many Wesleyans—the largest Methodist body—were lukewarm towards the proposal for union with the Bible Christians and Primitive Methodists. That union was realised in 1900 in SA (and two years later in other states) and owed a great deal to the advocacy of Burgess. Quite apart from pragmatic arguments (it would save money and prevent overlapping) he saw union as facilitating the evangelistic impulse at the heart of the Methodist tradition and also as enhancing the influence of the church on public life. His ideas were gathered together in Methodism and the Twentieth Century, a small and widely-read book published in 1901.

The Methodist commitments of Burgess were combined with an interest in journalism. Prior to union he edited the Wesleyan paper, the Christian Weekly and Methodist Journal. He was a leader writer for several years for the South Australian Register and also contributed prize-winning essays to religious papers in the United States of America. As a result of these he was awarded an honorary LLD by Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, USA.

A major literary achievement was his editorship of the two-volume Cyclopedia of South Australia. This massive miscellany of information on aspects of the state's life and history contains also scores of biographical entries on leading citizens. It remains a useful historical source. For 12 years from 1901 to 1913 Burgess was vice-president and secretary of the Adelaide Children's Hospital. He was also secretary of the SA branch of the Royal Geographical Society.

For a man of limited education Burgess achieved much in both church and community life. His public interests did not deflect him from his loyalty to Methodism and the evangelical heritage of the Wesleyanism in which he was nurtured.

ADB 7; A D Hunt, This Side of Heaven: A History of Methodism in South Australia, (Adelaide, 1985); Australian Christian Commonwealth, 20 Nov 1923

ARNOLD D HUNT