John Heinrich STAHLE

STAHLE (OR STOEHLE), JOHN HEINRICH (HENRY) (b. Wurtemberg, Germany, 1840, d. Portland, Vic, 23 August 1915). CMA/CMS missionary to the Lake Condah Mission Aborigines.

After military service in Germany, Stahle was trained for missionary service by the Moravian Missionary Brotherhood and ordained to the Moravian ministry in 1871. While in Germany he had married Marie Stainar of Konigsfeld, but she died having no children. On arrival in Australia the following year he served first at the Moravian Mission at Ebenezer in western Vic, and then became manager of the government mission at Coranderrk for two years. Near the end of 1875 he took charge of the Anglican Lake Condah Mission near Heywood in western Vic, a difficult position which he occupied with distinction for 38 years terminating with the closure of the mission in June 1913 and his retirement.

Although ordained to the ministry of the Moravian Church, Stahle's orders were not recognised by successive bps of Ballarat in whose diocese he worked. He refused reordination on the grounds that this would denigrate Moravian orders. So throughout his long ministry at Lake Condah he was unable to take services of holy communion, which greatly inconvenienced the life of the mission, and was a source of great grief to him.

He was a strict disciplinarian, but very hardworking, painstaking, practical and business-like. From 1875 to 1892 he was employed by the Melbourne Diocesan Missionary Committee, and from 1892 he was a CMA/CMS missionary, supported partly by the Society and partly by the Vic government. On his retirement the Board for the Protection of Aborigines, the CMA, and more importantly, the Aboriginal people of the mission and others who had grown up there, paid a warm tribute to his long and faithful ministry, so ably supported by his wife. Stahle was buried in the South Cemetery, Portland. He was survived by his wife Mary Ann Chisholm (née McLean), and seven children.

Keith Cole, The Lake Condah Aboriginal Mission (1984)

KEITH COLE

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