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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 12 (March 2, 1936)

[section]

There were no braver and no more useful pioneers of civilisation in New Zealand than the early missionaries of the Wesleyan faith, the founders of Methodism in this country more than a century ago. They were not long in following in the footsteps of the great Samuel Marsden, who did not confine his sympathies to the members of the English Church Mission but generously assisted the Wesleyans to gain a footing in North New Zealand and came to their assistance in their early troubles with the Maoris. The names mentioned in this sketch are those of men greatly honoured in the records of our nation-making. They were not only teachers of the new religion to the Maoris, but they were practical settlers of the best class and their stations and cultivations were object-lessons to the tribes among whom they established their churches and schools and farms. The most prominent of all those who planted the first mission when New Zealand was still a kind of No Man's Land was the Rev. John Hobbs. He is honoured in history for his notable share in obtaining the consent of the Hokianga and neighbouring tribes to the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. He and the famous C.M.S. missionary Henry Williams were in fact the principal men who influenced the Maoris of the North in favour of the Treaty and the British flag.

Rev. Samuel Leigh, the first Wesleyan missionary to the Maoris (Born 1785, died 1852.)

Rev. Samuel Leigh, the first Wesleyan missionary to the Maoris (Born 1785, died 1852.)