| Project Title : Reverend William Gray |
| Assignment Type : Person |
| First Name : Sandra |
| Last Name: Caudal |
| Date Range: 1851-1900 |
| Why: I worked for a few months at the South Australian Museum in 2000. The curator of Foreign Ethnology, Dr Barry Craig, had asked me to read Reverend's Gray's diaries at the State Library to find information regarding the artefacts that he had donated to the museum in 1895. William Gray seemed to have had a fascinating life and I decided to know more about him. |
| Summary : Rev William Gray was a missionary who lived on the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu)for 13 years. He translated the Gospels of Luke into the local language. Having witnessed there a few kidnappings, he became a fierce opponent of the Kanaka Labour Trade. He was also a writer and a historian. Reverend Gray was born near Gawler in 1854 and died in Adelaide in 1937. |
| Limitations :Time. There were thousands of handwritten documents to read, some of which were very difficult to read. |
| Issues Raised : Dates were sometimes problematic. Dates on secondary sources did not always match dates on Reverend Gray's personal correspondence and/or diaries. I decided to rely on William Gray's dates as he was very well organised and dated everything he wrote. |
| UserFAN : ruff0013 |
| AssignmentId : 139 |
