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Name: BOYCE, WILLIAM BINNINGTON (1804-1889),

b. 9 November 1804 (Beverley, Yorkshire, England).

d. 8 March 1889 (Glebe, NSW, Australia); bur. Wesleyan section, Rookwood cemetery, NSW.

Family: From age 6 lived with an aunt.

Educ. Commerce, Hull;

Ordination: 1829, called to the ministry, was accepted by the British Conference

Parishes: Buntingvale, Umtata River, South Africa(1829-1843); Bolton, Lancashire (1843-45); Founding general superintendent of mission churches ‘in Australia, Van Diemen's Land, the Friendly Islands and Feejee' as Australian Conference (1846); in retirement regularly conducted services in the Toxteth Park Chapel near the Glebe.

Achievements: Member, University of Sydney Senate (1851-59); esp. 'the library committee';

Married: (1) Maria nee Bowden (1834), d. of James Bowden, merchant of Hull; four daughters. (2) Jane Elizabeth Pitman nee Allen (1873), eldest daughter of Sir George Wigram Allen.

Children: 4 daughters by first marriage

Publications: Gleaner (editor, weekly, from 1847); edited Memoirs of the Rev. William Shaw (1874); Six Lectures Upon the Old Testament (1878); The Higher Criticism and the Bible (1881); Introduction to the Study of History (1884).

Other: As a child, influenced by Abbé Fouchet, a French refugee; Described the grammatical structure of the Kaffir language; published a grammar (1834, Grahamstown); friends with Henry Parkes; First President of self-governing Australian Wesleyan connexion (1855, relected 1856); 'fought strenuously for Methodism's standing-place in educational matters'; visited England; advocated assisted emigration to the Australian colonies; defended Dr. Lang; a General Secretary of the Wesleyan Missionary Society; presided at first conference of Eastern British America; presented two thousand volumes from his own library to the Stanmore Wesleyan Theological Institute

Sources: A portrait in oils is in the Great Hall, University of Sydney.J. Colwell, The Illustrated History of Methodism (Syd, 1904); J. Colwell (ed), A Century in the Pacific (Syd, 1914); Weekly Advocate (Sydney), 16 Mar 1889; Nathaniel Turner journal, 1853 (State Library of New South Wales); Henry Parkes letters (State Library of New South Wales); Wesleyan Methodist Australian District minutes, 1851-54 (State Library of New South Wales); Wesleyan Methodist Conference, New South Wales and Queensland, 1890 (State Library of New South Wales); S. G. Claughton, 'Boyce, William Binnington (1804 - 1889)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 3, Melbourne University Press, 1969, pp 210-212.

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OBITUARY.

The Advertiser, 23 January 1914, p. 9

LADY ALLEN.

LONDON, January 22.

The death occurred yesterday of Lady Allen, widow of the late Sir George Wigram Allen, a former Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, who died in 1885.

Prior to her marriage in 1851. Lady Allen was Marian, eldest daughter of the Rev. William D. Boyce, a prominent Wesleyan minister.