George Stonehouse

George Stonehouse (1 July 1808 – 24 July 1871) was a Baptist minister in South Australia, founder of the LeFevre Terrace Baptist Church, North Adelaide, and first president of Adelaide Theological College.

Stonehouse was born in Kent, the son and grandson of Baptist ministers. He was five years at Newport Pagnell College ("The Newport Academy for Dissenting Ministers") under Thomas Palmer Bull (1773–1859), then was put in charge of the Baptist church at Middleton Cheney, in South Northamptonshire, where he served for seven years. His next charge was a church in Chipping Norton, where he served from 1838 to 1945, but the cold wet climate of Oxfordshire was affecting his health, and when he heard George Fife Angas and other representatives of the South Australian Company offered him a position as president of a projected Baptist college in the warmer climate of the new colony he accepted, and arrived in the colony with his wife and four children aboard Templar in November 1845.

Plans for the Baptist college had been dropped for want of funds, so in 1846 he opened a private school "Angaston Manual Labour College" in Angaston, which he ran for around two years. In 1847 he was called to take over the Ebenezer Chapel in Brougham Place. Then in 1848 Rev. James Allen returned from England, and a large section of the congregation elected to have him resume his place as their pastor, and Stonehouse and 30 or 40 adherents seceded, and began meeting at Salem Chapel, the old Wesleyan building in Kermode Street, North Adelaide. They then set about establishing a Baptist chapel on LeFevre Terrace, where the first service, with a crowd of worshippers of various denominations, was held on 21 April 1850. Several Christian ministers officiated, notably (Presbyterian) Rev. John Gardner.

In 1863 a Baptist Association was formed, bringing together the various sects of the church.

Stonehouse began suffering a weakness of the throat which so affected his voice that his preaching was almost inaudible, and in 1869 was forced to retire from the pulpit, to be replaced by the Rev. J. Langdon Parsons, and was made President of the new Baptist theological college and the tutor of several theological students. The congregation had outgrown the Lefevre Terrace building and services were held in the Temperance Hall, and plans made for a new church building, also on Tynte Street. In December 1869 the foundation stone was laid, and the first service was held in the new North Adelaide Baptist Church on 6 November 1870.

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