It’s been 185 years this month since 17-year-old William Barratt, Australia’s first Mormon, stepped ashore on Kaurna land at Port Adelaide.
Mr Barratt left his home in rural England full of hope he would bring this new American religion to the young colony of South Australia and make converts of his fellow settlers.
Wet Bible and profanity
His four-month voyage to South Australia had been trying. He fished his soggy Bible out of a canal while en route to board his ship, and endured the mockery and profanity of his fellow travellers.
William Barratt eventually joined the Congregationalist Church at Encounter Bay. This drawing of the church is believed to be circa 1880. (Supplied: State Library of South Australia)
Unfortunately for Mr Barratt, his experience did not get much better in his early days in the colony.
He warned his friends against coming to South Australia due to people “wholly determined” to reject his preaching.
“I never saw so much prostitution, drunkenness, and extortion in England as is practised here,” Mr Barratt wrote.
“Many are crying peace and safety to this place, but I say woe! Woe!!! Woe is their doom!”
Brenton Griffin, a former Mormon missionary himself and now Flinders University-based academic, has studied Mr Barratt’s history.
After limited success with converting others to Mormonism, William Barratt became a lay minister at a congregational church once located at the site of Encounter Bay’s Tabernacle Cemetery. (ABC South East SA: Caroline Horn)
“I feel sorry for him, and I was a missionary myself. I know how tough it is, but I reckon he had a tougher job than I did,” Dr Griffin said.
Haphazard Mormon
Dr Griffin — who wrote his PhD on the history of the Mormon Church in Australia — said Mr Barratt already had plans to come to South Australia before being converted, and after he joined the church, the Mormons in England viewed this as an opportunity to continue to spread the religion.
“He was kind of a haphazard one [Mormon],” Dr Griffin said.
“They gave him the authority and permission to preach and to baptise while he was here with his family, and he planned to go on to America. That was his goal.”
William Barratt in 1880. (Supplied: Brenton Griffin)
Although Mr Barratt had been the only member of his family to be converted to the new religion, the religion was making converts across England and Europe. Many of whom did head to the United States to be part of the community and “build up Zion”.
“He warned against people migrating to South Australia. The letters that he wrote, you can tell his heartbreak. You can tell that he was very genuine in trying to bring about people’s salvation,” Dr Griffin said.
Frontier Adelaide
Keith Conlon – who is a fellow historian and former chair of the SA Heritage Council – said while early Adelaide was often seen today as a relatively progressive society with lofty aims, Mr Barratt’s view was not entirely unjustified.
Keith Conlon says William Barratt’s view was not entirely unjustified. (ABC News: Rebecca Puddy)
He said in the early days of European settlement, even the governor’s marines who were supposed to be maintaining the peace caused problems.
“They were getting on the booze all the time, so we’ve got a drunken quasi-police force,” he said.
Mr Barratt determined he would try to get some money together to fulfil his plan to reach America and live among other Mormons, but he never made it.
After working for a time, he followed his mother and stepfather to the small whaling, fishing and farming community at Encounter Bay in search of employment.
Although William Barratt left the church, later Mormons built the 1922 chapel in Wright Street in Adelaide. (Supplied: State Library of South Australia)
A single convert
Despite his initial hopes, there is only one confirmed record of him making a successful conversion, a man called Robert Beauchamp, who left Australia to live in Utah in the United States.
Mr Barratt, however, stayed in the area around Victor Harbor and eventually joined the Congregationalists, a group with a strong membership in Victor Harbor and links to his home back in Staffordshire.
Dr Griffin believes Mr Barratt became disillusioned with the Mormon Church after its founder Joseph Smith was murdered by a jail-storming mob while being held in prison on charges of treason against the state of Illinois.
“Barratt maybe thought it [the church] was coming to an end,” Dr Griffin said.
Mr Barratt saw out his life as a farmer in the Bald Hills area. He died at the age of 66, and was described by his daughter Annie in his obituary as a “preacher, doctor, dentist and general adviser”.
William Barratt went on to live at Bald Hills near Victor Harbor and attended and preached at the now ruined Congregational Church. (ABC South East SA: Caroline Horn)
However haphazard and perhaps unsuccessful his career as a Mormon was, Mr Barratt was officially recognised by the church as Australia’s first Mormon, Dr Griffin said.
In Australia today, Mormon records state they have about 163,000 members, with the census recording 70,000.
Dr Griffin believes the figure would be “somewhere in the middle”, with former members such as himself still recorded on church records.