A New Beginning - The Tent Mission“Whoa Betsy”, said John, and thankfully the mare stopped, dropped her head, and waited. John looked about to see just where he had to take the load of tents, household furniture and belongings. His father, Fred Martin, came across with the little figure of Pastor Robert Hare and the taller Pastor David Steed, striding beside him. Together the three men conferred on the best spot to put the big main tent, and then the two family tents, and the other, which would be shared for food preparation etc.
(Type of family tent used by evangelists in 1893) The decision having been made, John was told to bring the wagon off the dusty road into the Stranger paddock, and begin unloading. All fell to work with a will, and soon the great heap of canvass and poles were separated into appropriate piles. Nettie Hare restrained Reuben, her three-year old firstborn, as he tried to help the men. Up went the signs, telling of the meetings which were to be held there each night for the next few weeks, and so all the users of the Windsor Road were able to read that the Seventh-day Adventists had come to Kellyville. The Martin family wasted no time in telling their neighbours about the meetings they had attended in When the meetings began, curiosity brought almost all the population to crowd into the ‘canvas chapel’. After all, they had read in the paper about the meetings in
(Robert Hare, Henrietta and toddler son Reuben) The population of Kellyville was mainly Church of England and Roman Catholic at that time, early 1893. Indeed the first church to be erected in Kellyville was the Church of England, and it had been erected only three years before. The Catholics did not build a church until 1978. (Before this time the Anglicans worshiped at Castle Hill or Rouse Hill, and the Catholics mainly at Baulkham Hills.) So the preaching in the canvas chapel became one of the main topics of conversation throughout the little “SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM The Seventh-day Adventists are gaining a firm hold of the inhabitants of this district. Their meetings, which are held in a tent, are very often crowded, and the interest taken is very great. Such strides are they making that it is rumoured that Mr James, who plies coaches to and from Parramatta, is going to give up running the same on Saturdays and supplement Sunday running instead; but what I do know for a fact is that a certain resident who was the possessor of some very fine swine had some done away with. Many residents are now working on Sundays and resting on Saturdays. A visit from the police to the locality is shortly to be made and any persons who are found working on Sunday are to be dealt with according to the law, so I would advise the Seventh-day Adventists to make a sure thing of it and have two Sundays, viz., Saturday and Sunday.” You can imagine the turmoil of people’s thinking when they were told that really they should be worshipping on Saturday and not Sunday. Soon some people announced that they thought the preachers were right in their teaching and others began to be very upset because friends and relatives were thinking this way. Mary Pryce, daughter of the schoolmaster Edward Pryce, and mistress of the first Post Office in Kellyville, was one of those who decided that what the preachers said was indeed true. Edward, her father, was a staunch supporter of the Church of England, and Mary was a Sunday School teacher. Full of zeal, she began to teach her youthful Sunday School class what she now believed.
 (Mary Pryce - mistress of the first post office in Kellyville) Needless to say, this did not please the Church Board, and the Reverend Proctor was asked to counsel Mary, suggesting that she either stop espousing her new faith, or cease teaching her class. Mary Pryce decided to leave the Church of England and become a Seventh-day Adventist. (Mary Pryce met and married another Adventist, George Whealand Gane. One of her two sons, Edward, became an Adventist pastor, working with Pastor Reuben Hare, the 3-year old with the desire to help unload the tents. Mary died in 1946 in the Sydney Adventist Hospital, Wahroonga.) The disposal of ‘swine’ referred to in the article in the Cumberland Argus quoted above, refers to the strong bias toward healthful living the Adventists have always had. One aspect of this espouses the avoidance of ‘unclean’ meats, as set out in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. The Adventist advocate the avoidance of all flesh foods, recommending instead a balanced vegetarian diet, which they believe people were primarily meant to eat. |
Kellyville Seventh-day Adventist Church
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