James Egan MOULTON

MOULTON, JAMES EGAN (b. North Shields, Northumberland, England, 4 Jan 1841; d. Lindfield, NSW, 9 May 1909). Methodist missionary and educationalist.

Born to the Rev James Egan Moulton and his wife Catherine (née Fiddian), he was educated at Kingswood School. Despite suffering from stammering and asthma he found work as a private tutor and was then called by God to be a missionary. Controlling his stammer, he entered the Wesleyan Methodist ministry. Aged twenty-two, designated for 'foreign work' and newly ordained, he sailed aboard the Merrie England on 13 Feb 1863, hoping to serve in Fiji.

Arriving in Sydney on 31 May 1863, Moulton learned with dismay that single missionaries were not permitted in the Pacific Islands, so wrote home asking his fiancée, Emma Knight, to come and marry him. In the meantime he needed temporary employment. He was regarded as a 'godsend' by the Rev John Manton (q.v.) and other church leaders who in July 1863 were inaugurating the Wesleyan Collegiate Institution at Newington House on the Parramatta River. Requests to England for schoolmasters were as yet unanswered, so Moulton, having been a teacher, was appointed the founding head master.

When a schoolmaster, Thomas Johnston, arrived from England, Moulton relinquished control but remained at Newington as a teacher until he married Emma. They sailed for Tonga on 29 April 1865, it being realised by mission administrators that a gifted schoolmaster-missionary was needed there. King George Tupou requested Moulton to establish in Tonga a similar institution to Newington. Named after the king as Tupou College, it began in 1866 and was soon making a significant contribution to general education and to the training of Tongans for the Wesleyan ministry. Becoming a skilled linguist, Moulton translated hymns, liturgies and great works of literature, wrote numerous textbooks, and invented a useful method of musical notation for the Tongan people. His finest work was the translation of the Bible from its original tongues into idiomatic Tongan. This version is still in current use.

For nearly thirty years Moulton faithfully preached the gospel and taught in Tonga. Political and religious controversy with the Rev S W Baker in the 1880s led to alienation from King George, who supported Baker's breakaway 'Free Church of Tonga' and the subsequent persecution of Wesleyans. The conflict led to Moulton's departure in 1889 but for the remainder of his life he continued his love of and commitment to the people of Tonga.

In 1893 Moulton, then president of the NSW Wesleyan Methodist Conference, was appointed to a resident position as president of Newington College, now at Stanmore. The crippling depression had reduced enrolments and morale, and Moulton worked hard to attract funding and new pupils. Numbers of Tongan boys were enrolled during his periodic visits back to the Islands.

He was initial president of the Old Newingtonians' Union in 1895, and led the celebration of Newington's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1899, just prior to his retirement from the college. The degree of DD was awarded him by the University of Toronto principally for his work on biblical translation. In following years, despite debilitating asthma, his zeal for the work of Christ never flagged; he continued to visit Tonga, being chairman of the Tonga Methodist District from 1895 to 1906. He died at Lindfield after a long illness on 9 May 1909, mourned especially in Tonga, where his memory is revered to this day. Buried at Gore Hill Cemetery, an obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald praised him as 'a devoted servant to his Church and to the cause of the Great Master'.

ADB 2; H G Cummins, 'Missionary Chieftain: James Egan Moulton and Tongan Society 1865-1909' (PhD thesis, ANU, 1980); P L Swain, A Quarter Past the Century: A History of Newington College 1863-1988 (Sydney, 1988), 6-50; J E and W F Moulton, Moulton of Tonga (London, 1921); N Rutherford, Shirley Baker and the King of Tonga (Melbourne, 1971)

PETER L SWAIN