Thomas Roberts

Thomas Roberts moved with his family from Mancester to Stratford, London when John Hartley Roberts was still a little lad.

After hearing fabulous stories of the shiploads of gold that were coming from Australia, Thomas and Mary Ann Roberts emigrated from London UK with their whole family in 1853, their destination being the Australian goldfields.

Thomas Roberts received a lay reader's commission from the Bishop of London to act as chaplain on board the ship he brought his family out to Australia on.

Landing at Geelong, he began Australian life as an artist and teacher of drawing in the Geelong Grammar school where he enrolled his son John Hartley as a student.

Thomas Roberts subsequently went to Samoa as a Congregational missionary, under the London Missionary Society, and afterwards settled in Sydney as one of the first chaplains in charge of the Sydney City Mission.

He finally passed away, in the midst of his work, on 17th August 1871 aged 66, as it is recorded at the Necropolis on a stone - "Erected to Tom Roberts, Missionary, by a few friends, in memory of a faithful servant of Christ".