Robert HARTLEY

HARTLEY, ROBERT (b. Trawden, Lancashire, England, 8 March 1817; d. Rockhampton, Qld, 25 May 1892). Primitive Methodist minister.

Son of a Lancashire schoolmaster, later city missioner, Robert Hartley began a two year probation as a preacher in the English Primitive Methodist Church at the age of 17. He was received into the ministry in June 1835 and in 1838 was appointed to the Channel Islands. There, on 4 June 1840, he was married. During the following 20 years Hartley ministered in five English counties and in Belfast, Ireland. He also conducted missions in Wales, Scotland and English rural districts.

In 1858-59 the Primitive Methodist Church in Sydney appealed to the English Church for assistance. Hartley answered the call, arriving with his wife and family in Sydney in June 1860 to begin a four year ministry. In January 1864 he preached the opening sermon at the newly established Primitive Methodist Church in Rockhampton. This was the frontier town's first Methodist church - the Wesleyans followed several months later.

Hartley returned to Rockhampton as minister in October 1864. He spent the rest of his life in the rapidly developing unofficial capital of central Qld. He not only conducted the usual town services and a weekly open-air service but also rode through the bush to the widely scattered goldfields where he eventually established churches. Faith and works were Hartley's watchwords. He was a founding member of the Rockhampton Benevolent Society (1866) and played a leading role during decades of non-government welfare for the socially deprived. It was said that he never imputed unworthy motives, but was always ready to suggest some creditable intention for acts that were questionable.

The 'Kanakas' (Melanesians) brought to work in the sugarcane fields and pastoral industry from the mid 1860s attracted his special concern. He not only brought the gospel to them, but was 'father and friend' as well. In 1873 he baptised the first Melanesian child to be received into the Christian church in Rockhampton.

Hartley held office in several non-denominational organisations, but it was the Temperance Society which received his staunchest advocacy. Within two weeks of his death in 1892, a public meeting decided that a drinking fountain would be a most appropriate tribute. A century later this handsome memorial carved in local sandstone, and spouting pure water, still stands beside the Rockhampton GPO.

While Hartley 'had ever been able to look over the battlements of his own church', he also had a respected place within his denomination. When the Qld churches were joined in Conference in 1890, Hartley became first president. Robert Hartley's name lived on in the Hartley Memorial Church which replaced the original building in 190l. In recent years this was sold for removal and on the site is Life Line—an institution within Methodist traditions of social welfare.

Archer Street Methodist Circuit 1863-1963 (Rockhampton, 1963); Circuit Minute Books, Methodist Archives, University of Central Queensland; Lorna McDonald, Rockhampton A History of City and District (Brisbane, 1981); Methodist Jubilee Souvenir 1863-1913 (Rockhampton, 1913); Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), 7 Mar 1865; 29 Apr, 17 Oct 1868; 27 Jan 1873; 26 May 1892; 26 Aug 1955

LORNA MCDONALD