Joseph KINGSBURY

KINGSBURY, JOSEPH (b. Marsh Farm, near Taunton, Somersetshire, England, 24 Oct 1816; d. 7 March 1902). Veterinary surgeon, medical doctor, pioneer of Churches of Christ in NSW.

At the age of 12 Kingsbury began assisting his father in the family veterinary practice. He was apprenticed at 15 and at 20 set up in practice on his own, several miles from the family home at Marsh Farm. The transition from apprentice to practitioner coincided with a deepening concern with religion. Influenced by the preaching of a student minister from a local Congregational college, Kingsbury joined the Congregational church and became superintendent of the Sunday school. He was soon attracted by the zeal of the local Methodists and became a local preacher. He married a daughter of the clerk of the parish and the couple emigrated to Sydney in 1838. In Sydney Kingsbury set up practice as a veterinarian. He later became an MD and practiced medicine.

In Sydney, Kingsbury associated himself with the Wesleyan Methodists. He was one of fourteen local preachers in the Sydney First Circuit in 1841. He was last present at the Local Preacher's meeting of the circuit on 14 January 1842. He applied for readmission in 1848, but was refused. The grounds of objection were not mentioned.

In 1852 Kingsbury was asked by a Wesleyan couple to visit their son-in-law, Albert Griffin, who had been influenced by literature published by the British Churches of Christ and the American Disciples, which had been sent to him by his brother, a member of the St Pancras Rd Church of Christ in London. The point at issue was whether the Holy Spirit worked directly in the heart, as Wesley argued, or whether he worked through the Scriptures. Kingsbury was won over to the latter position, and with three other Wesleyans, who were similarly convinced, were baptised by Griffin in Cook's River on 4 September 1853.

The first Churches of Christ congregation to meet in Sydney had commenced in 1852 in the home of Henry Mitchell. After the acquisition of the Wesleyan Methodists, the meetings shifted to Kingsbury's home in Enmore, where it met for several years before moving to buildings in Newtown.

Kingsbury, a forceful and eloquent orator, was an elder of the Newtown Church and the most influential member of Churches of Christ in New South Wales in the early days. He helped establish a NSW Conference of Churches of Christ in 1886 and was elected its inaugural president.

Kingsbury's energy and conviction is clearly evident in a newspaper debate he conducted with 'A Spectator' in the Correspondence column of the Christian Pleader, edited by the Rev Barzillai Quaife, through August-September 1859. The Newtown congregation, or 'Kingsburyites' as they were known, had drawn fire for their open-air preaching in Hyde Park, at that time a race course, on Sunday afternoons.

C E Bowser, 'Dr Joseph Kingsbury, 1816-1902', Digest of the Australian Churches of Christ Historical Society 11, Sept 1964; G Chapman, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism: A History of Churches of Christ in Australia (Melbourne, 1979)

GRAEME CHAPMAN