Samuel KEEN

KEEN, SAMUEL (b. South Molton, Devon England, 5 Dec 1818; d. Port Elliot, SA, 21 June 1871). Bible Christian minister.

Keen was sent as a child to an Independent Sunday school but at about the age of twenty he came under the influence of the Bible Christians and after a period of distress 'he was led into the liberty of the Gospel of Christ'. Then in the employ of the Dowager Lady Fortescue, he became a local (lay) preacher in the villages near Bideford.

In 1847 Keen spent some months at Shebbear College and in 1845 was received as a minister on probation by the Bible Christian Conference. For four years he served in two English circuits, was received into full connexion in 1852 and then volunteered to go to SA. He married Sarah Ingerson and, along with another young minister, the party arrived at Port Adelaide in March 1853.

The Bible Christian mission in the colony was at the time less than five years old and had only two ministers. Keen went as a pioneer preacher to the settlers west of Gawler, north of Adelaide. His letters to the committee in England reveal a man with 'a passion for souls', riding his horse from farm to farm, preaching in the rude homes of the settlers and aiming always for a verdict. During his two terms on the Gawler plains, he formed 15 congregations and built over a dozen churches, all with Biblical names. The area became one of the most Methodist in the colony.

Before his relatively early death at the age of 53, Keen had served in three other circuits and had made a significant contribution to Bible Christian Methodism during the first twenty years of its existence in the colony.

Bible Christian Minutes of Conference (UK) 1872; A D Hunt, This Side of Heaven: A History of Methodism in South Australia (Adelaide, 1985)

ARNOLD D HUNT