Joseph DARE

DARE, JOSEPH (b. Sturminster, Dorset, England, 27 Feb 1831; d. Melbourne, Vic, 28 Mar 1880). Wesleyan Methodist minister.

As a youth Dare was quick at learning and at sixteen was being employed as the agent for a local Dorset agricultural concern. Converted at the age of seventeen during a revival at Sturminster, he joined the Wesleyan church and became a helper. Within a year he left England for SA, arriving in Adelaide late in 1849, where he was examined and accepted as a local preacher. Daniel Draper (q.v.) recognised his considerable potential and suggested the Adelaide Quarterly Meeting employ him as a hired local preacher. In that capacity he pioneered the Mount Barker and Willunga districts and in 1851 was received as a probationer in the ministry. On 4 June 1856 he married Elizabeth Clery who was to survive him by forty years. For twenty-seven years he laboured with great success in SA and Vic circuits.

His ministry was marked by an early maturity and his natural endowments won him an outstanding reputation as a pulpit orator. His popularity as a platform speaker contributed to his early death. His genial, happy spirit commended the faith he taught with sincerity and unfeigned humility. In 1874 failing health compelled him to take a year's rest. Visiting America and England his leave of absence became an extensive preaching tour as he addressed congregations, camp meetings and Conferences. His conduct of special services and his judicious use of fresh methods gained him appreciative audiences and delayed his recovery for another year. In 1876 he was able to resume circuit duties and in 1878 was elected president of the Victoria and Tasmania Conference. It was a recognition of an intelligent, evangelical ministry and gifted leadership in church and community. In the same year the State University of New Orleans awarded him an honorary DD. From 1875 to 1879 he was editor of the Wesleyan Spectator and despite failing health continued until the August before his death. His last public address was the ordination charge preached in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy on 29 Jan 1879.

Wesleyan Methodist Conference Minutes, 1880; The Spectator, 16 April 1880

T M O'CONNOR