Kernewek Lowender (12th – 18th May 2025)
Seminar – ‘Cornish Australians in Industry and Commerce’
INTRODUCTION
Samuel Carvosso was my great great grandfather. He was born in Cornwall in 1814 and migrated with his wife Louisa and young family to Adelaide on 13 February 1849. Here he set up a coach building business. He died in 1874, Louisa ‘in 1876. Beyond this, my family remembered almost nothing about him.
As I researched his life a fascinating picture of this ‘old colonist’[1] emerged.
I concluded that Samuel‘s life, as an entrepreneurial coach builder businessman, and a child of the long forgotten Cornish revivals of 1814–1834, provides us insight into the drivers and character of the Cornish Wesleyans in colonial South Australia. His story brings to life the people behind South Australia’s Paradise of Dissent.
Samuel’s first 20 years in Cornwall spanned the forgotten revivals. Samuel continued to be an enthusiastic Methodist, South Australia’s largest denominational group (Wesleyan Methodist, Primitive Methodist and Bible Christian).
A Memoir of Samuel’s grandfather William Carvosso[2] details a renowned lay Cornishman’s deep spiritual life but little on his working life. The Rev Benjamin’s biography[3], Samuel’s uncle, details a Cornish Wesleyan clergyman’s life. Penner’s doctoral thesis[4] (Robert Penner, Swept into the Abyss: A Family History of Cornish Methodism, Missionary Networks and the British Empire, 1789-1885, Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University, USA, 2012.) provides insight into the evangelist work of Cornish Wesleyan missionaries and clergy, especially the Carvossos. Pike’s Paradise of Dissent[5] discusses ‘vital religion’. Pike’s book explores how the nonconformists, including dissenters from the Church of England (such as Methodists, Baptists, and Congregationalists), played a significant role in shaping the colony.
My book[6], the historical biography of Samuel Carvosso – Coachbuilder and much more 1814–1874, steps into his public life as a Cornish Wesleyan. This paper adds the detail of a laity’s working life to the above works. It shows the intersection of personal decisions and beliefs, with historical trends. It also demonstrates the impact of the little reported rolling Wesleyan revivals on the development of the Paradise of Dissent.
CORNWALL YEARS
Cornwall
What was distinctive about the Cornish? They were far removed from the London Metropolis:
One could go so far as to characterise the county as a colonial space in its own right, and it certainly had a reputation in England for barbarism and savagery. It also had a reputation as a hotbed of a riotous, revivalist Methodism.[7]
The Cornish were preoccupied with:
‘… wrench[ing] their living from the ocean and the rocks as miners, fishermen and sailors.[8]
… 1841 Seymour Tremenheere noted [the] … independent benefit clubs that people in the mining districts were ‘strongly inclined to their formation´, but the population is strongly averse to interference of gentlemen into their concerns.[9]
This was the world of Samuel and his extended family. Further characterised by:
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Cornwall was stubbornly resistant to the claims of the British State to tax trade, the English Church to collect tithes, and Metropolitan [London] Wesleyans to control local Methodist practices.
Finally, revivals had been occurring since the 1780s. For both his grandfather William Carvosso and his uncle Rev Benjamin Carvosso, revivalism was to remain of importance and was central to the next half-century of the family’s religious life.[10]
Forgotten Cornish Revivals 1814–1834
Samuel’s first twenty years, coincided with the forgotten Cornish revivals of 1814–1834. To Samuel, revivals were the norm and his extended family was strongly associated with them.
His renowned grandfather, William Carvosso, fostered these revivals through his tireless travels around Cornwall during his retirement, from the age of 60 until his death at 84. He was a Wesleyan class leader and an evangelist.
Paul Cook describes these revivals in The forgotten revival – The Cornish Revivals of 1814 to 1835. For example:
In November 1823 [Samuel now 9], a revival broke out at Constantine, five miles southwest of Falmouth … many of the ungodly were awakened and brought into spiritual liberty through the gospel. … Years later, most of those who testified to the forgiveness of sins in this revival were found continuing steadfastly in the faith.
Mylor Bridge [less than 2 km (1 mile) from Tregew Farm] and Flushing area, just north of Falmouth, had long resisted the gospel, but in … 1827 [Samuel now aged 13], it yielded. …, William Carvosso … wrote … ‘Such a sight, at this place, I have never seen before´. Prayer meetings were held night after night for months on end.[11]
Samuel’s immersion in revivals continued when he arrived in Adelaide where revivals were a norm of the Methodist churches.
Cornish Wesleyan Character
Samuel´s character was built on the Wesleyan stress of integrating a personal walk with God into all spheres of one’s life. This was aided through the weekly ‘class meeting´. These meetings helped early Methodists to resist the compartmentalisation of faith from work, by living integrated lives. For example:
Wesley on work: ‘In the Wesleyan view, godly work is not defined by what one does, but by the way one does it’ … [And] the motivations and character out of which those actions flow.[12]
William´s son Benjamin, said his father was:
… an example of industry both as a servant [to others] and as a man pursuing his own business.[13]
[William’s] industry was proverbial. He began life with little and got on by ‘the sweat of his brow´. To him, however, this was no slavery; for he went forth with cheerful feet and grateful delight to ‘labour truly to get his own living, and do his duty, in that state of life in which it had pleased God to call him. His industrious hands soon produced a striking change on his farm. When he entered on it, it was a mere desert; on which his neighbours prophesied he would soon starve; but within a few years, it became a favourite spot, exhibiting the happy effects of good management and diligent culture. As he could not bear sloth in himself, neither would he bear it in others; hence, as a master, when occasion required, he would, with stinging, stirring words, move on those about him.[14]
One of William´s often repeated and well-remembered proverbs was, ‘Make haste, for you will find the time all busy´.[15] Further, he carried:
… religion into the world and at the same time keeping the world out of religion. ‘Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit, serving the Lord´.[16]
Therefore, Samuel received from both his Grandfather and extended family, a deep impression of the importance of faith, a personal relationship with God, and the integration of faith with his working life.
Cornish Women
William’s wife, Alice, was the first person to be interned at the Ponsanooth chapel, dying six months before her grandson Samuel´s birth. William wrote that Alice was a ‘help meet for me all the days of her life. In matters temporal and spiritual, I always found her a lasting blessing to me´.[17] Benjamin observed that his mother had ‘strong intellectual powers´, read widely and had a heart for ‘relieving the hungry and poor and afflicted´. Also, she was ‘remarkably neat in her personal appearance, and distinguished by the order and regularity of her domestic arrangements´.[18] Alice must have formed the faith, love of books, and culture in Samuel´s father, William-the-farmer and the growing wider family.[19] When their home´s weekly Class became too large, Alice showed leadership, taking the women as a separate Class.[20]
Benjamin’s wife Deborah wrote in her diary pre-1817 of her strong biblical convictions on the role of women and equality with husbands as follows:
Woman was made for man a helpmeet. She was taken from his side, let him keep her by his side and she will help him much in the church of God. She can do what he cannot and in some things that he can do, she can do better than he. And in point of strength too, how woman preponderates among the recipients of true piety. The world’s hope lies chiefly in the woman’s bosom! … Without a female leader, a Methodist society or church is incomplete and is seldom doing its duty, ‘together with Christ’.[21]
Louisa, Samuel’s wife, had her 20 year elder sister Deborah´s model to follow:
Mrs. C. [Deborah] knew her calling and though ever anxious to do good in the Church, and beyond it, she made her prime duty to ‘look well to the ways of her household´.
Her active imagination was ever suggesting something new, that was caught by the benevolence of heart, and accomplished by the diligence of her hand.[22]
Therefore, Cornish Wesleyan women saw themselves as robust equal partners with their men.
Conflict with remote authorities
Cornish Wesleyanism strove for independence from the Metropolitan. The Carvossos were in this mould.
On 14 June 1791, just three months after John Wesley´s death, a group of 50 leading Cornish Methodists met in Redruth and drafted a manifesto for the future of Wesleyan Methodism. These included Benedict Carvosso, a fisherman from Mousehole, and his brother William Carvosso, Samuel´s grandfather. The manifesto demanded that the minister was not to choose class leaders but that the class should elect them, that no one could join or be expelled from a class except by vote and, amongst other things, lay preachers were to have an equal voice with the ministers on local issues. The annual Conference of the ministers rejected outright this play for laity democracy:
It was the opening volley of a connexional battle between lay advocates and Metropolitan [London] institutional men that would last over a half-century.[23]
The manifesto’s sentiments of lay control, local democratic rule, and lack of deference to faraway London Metropolitan institutions characterised the Cornish. This led to a pattern of conflict with remote authorities, including Carvossos, across the generations. The significant Methodist emigrant numbers ensured the realisation of religious freedom, democratic and egalitarian culture of the South Australian Colony, the Paradise of Dissent.[24]
Vital religion
Samuel had been immersed from childhood in Methodism’s ‘vital religion’. This is defined as a ‘movement with the characteristics of Evangelicalism’, and as an ‘intense, urgent, all-consuming faith’ which ‘appealed wholeheartedly and unashamedly to the emotions’. Furthermore, Bradley identifies of ‘vital religion’, its introspective nature and animating power. This encouraged a sense of purpose, personal stewardship, self-denial, personal usefulness, and a lifestyle governed by its evangelical focus.[25]
Samuel demonstrates the Wesleyan Cornish’s sense of obligation to family, God, church and society. Samuel grew up within this framework forming his worldview with the practical emphasis, not theological or propositional. His remaining years in Cornwall matured this in his work, marriage and church life.
Childhood
Samuel Carvosso was born on 4 January 1814 at Tregew Farm, Mylor parish, Cornwall, (refer to Figure 1) to William and Jane Carvosso. He was the third of six boys and two girls. The first three boys, born within three years, must have been a lively trio.
His father William Carvosso was a tenant farmer of 99 acres. Tregew farmhouse is a listed historical building complete with its U-shape central yard (refer to figure 1).
Removed to separate file –
Figure 1 – Map of Tregew Farmhouse, Mylor, Flushing and Falmouth (Copyright John A Carvosso, 2023)
On his 14th birthday, Samuel was indentured in Falmouth as an ‘apprentice … in the art of body carriage and coach and wheel making’. In Falmouth:
The glory and power of the revival in 1833 [Samuel aged 19] exceeded that of 1827.
These revivals during his adolescent years, continued to influence his faith and view of the world.[26]
In December 1834, Samuel turned 21 years and completed his apprenticeship.
Samuel as a Young Man
Samuel crossed the Tamar River to spend several years with Whippys saddlery in Mayfair, London.[27] Here he observed the 18-year-old Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1837, ‘occasioning a larger number of court-dress carriages than had ever previously been seen in London’. He no doubt feasted on the details of so many different carriages, gaining a grounding in technical, business knowledge and establishing contacts he would build on back in Cornwall, and later bring to South Australia.
It was quite an adventure for a young man. After all, he came from wild Cornwall.
By early 1840, Samuel had returned to Cornwall’s cleaner air and warmer climate, soon to marry his sweetheart, Louisa Banks.
Louisa Banks
Louisa Banks was born on 12 May 1814 in St Austell, Cornwall, next to Charlestown Harbour (refer to figure 2). Her father, Baker Banks Snr, was a master mariner later becoming the harbour master. William the Evangelist had stayed with the Banks family when Louisa was 13 years old.[28]
Removed to separate file
Figure 2 – Map showing Falmouth, Truro and Charlestown (Copyright John A Carvosso, 2023)
Marriage
Just after Louisa’s father’s death, on 7 February 1840, Louisa moved to Tregew Farm. Samuel proposed, and they married in the Wesleyan Chapel of Falmouth, on 24 March 1840. It was an early Wesleyan wedding. Only from 1837 were Methodists permitted to perform marriages.[29] The monopoly of the established Church of England over their lives was loosening establishing an expectation realised in South Australia of equality.
The married couple started life in Lemon Quay, Truro, a market town founded in 1175. It was recognised as Cornwall´s neatest town. It had well-built houses and partly paved streets with lights.[30]
Cornwall business years
Called to jury service in Truro, Samuel showed his frank Cornish nature and his ‘fear God, not man’ character. Speaking from the jury:
‘I wish you to understand that we have not given Mr. Bulmore [jury foreman] authority. We have a judgement of our own …’
A verdict of acquittal was given even though the Chairman had ‘no doubts’ of guilt![31]
By 1842, Samuel, at 28, was running the Lemon Quay coach manufactory as his own.[32] He later opened a second manufactory in Penzance.[33] Further, Samuel constructed the innovative mile meter in 1843 (refer to figure 3), preserved in the Truro museum.[34]
Removed to separate file
Figure 3 – 1843 Mile Meter – Truro Museum (Copyright Royal Institution of Cornwall)
Samuel was part of the middling class networks of Cornwall, particularly in west Cornwall. Learned societies and emerging small-town literary and philosophical societies fostered this networking. I can imagine the gregarious Samuel taking part.[35]
Louisa´s time was consumed with washing, cooking, sewing, dealing with family health issues etc. It would have filled the days and evenings. Without the labour-saving devices of today, home life for women was more than full-time. Louisa ran a large household of eventually six children, assisted by her orphaned niece, Caroline Banks b.1826, plus servants (two in Truro).
With Samuel busy in business, community and church affairs, Louisa did a substantial job setting up all their children for faith, marrying well and being successful contributors to society.
Women’s work and judgement were essential to the survival and welfare of the family. Yet, engagement with the community and church life is evident from the Cornish Women section above. All their children reached adulthood except for Benjamin. This is a beautiful testament to Louisa´s service and input to their lives. Benjamin died shortly after his birth which was just after their arrival in Adelaide.
Throughout May and June that year, looting and food riots occurred. This was the beginning of ‘the hungry forties’ caused by the potato blight and coincident with a 15% drop in grain production.[36]
Samuel Carvosso was now an entrepreneur, businessman and coachbuilder, soon to expand these on his arrival in Adelaide. There, he would be unfettered by England´s class structure. Realising the dissidents’ ‘professed ideals were civil liberty, social opportunity and equality for all religions’ … dependent on rank and property; the summit of society inaccessible except by gentle birth or exceptional wealth, of which they had neither.[37]
Emigration to South Australia
In 1848, Samuel aged 34 years, and under the cloud of political unrest with the severe decline of Cornwall’s prosperity, sold his Truro business.[38]
The Glenelg left London docks on 10 November 1848 with 130 passengers. It stopped at Falmouth where Samuel and Louisa, six months pregnant, plus their four children and niece Caroline Banks, aged 23, embarked.[39] They emigrated ‘unassisted’ as did the great majority of the middling class South Australian emigrants.[40]
The mass overseas emigration that began in the 1840s was explained by the ‘fact´ that Cornishmen were ‘a race prone to adventure whose pursuits have taken them into remote lands´.[41] They saw themselves as part of the broader world where ‘America was known as the next parish over´.[42]
Penner provides insight into the depth of the Cornish Wesleyan worldwide network. This was reflected in Samuel´s world with his Australian network of both family members and Cornish connections:
The Carvossos found a dense network of family, commerce, and denomination waiting for them in Australia. This network that tied the mainland colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia to Van Diemen’s Land across the Bass Strait and New Zealand, Fiji, and Tonga across the Tasman Sea. … They even leapt across the Pacific to the Canadas, British Columbia, and the United States. … such networks as, it is possible to see ideological patterns emerging; the commitment to free trade; to nonconformity in general and Wesleyan Methodism in particular; to education as a marker of commercial and social success; and to a set of universal values that were as exportable as the commodities on which the colonial economy depended.[43]
SOUTH AUSTRALIA YEARS
Early years
Arrivals for 1849 were ‘13,472 people, the highest for the century. The population by year-end was 53,000’.[44]
As Samuel settled into Adelaide, the Methodists numbered a third of church attendance (see Table 3). The large and growing percentage of Methodists, together with the other Protestant denominations, drove the nonconformist culture of Adelaide.
Table 3 – Church attendance 1851[45]
| Denomination | Average Attendances |
| Wesleyan Methodists | 3,805 |
| Primitive Methodist | 1,567 |
| Congregational | 1,807 |
| Presbyterian | 200 |
| Baptists | 966 |
| Church of England | 2,282 |
| Church of Scotland | 597 |
| Church of Rome | 939 |
| Lutheran | 1,495 |
| Others | 1,320 |
| Total | 14,978 |
Church attendance of 23% in 1851 appears low. The population was 66,538.[46] However, by 1870, after much building of churches and chapels and a string of revivals, available seatings peaked at 70%. Adelaide was then known as ‘the city of churches´. The nonconformists´ attendance outnumbered the Church of England by 3:1.
Chalmers ‘demonstrates that revivals were far more extensive than previously thought, and were a very significant factor in the numerical growth of South Australian Methodism during the [first decades 1838 to 1865]’.[47] (Brian Chalmers, ‘Methodists and Revivalism in South Australia, 1839-1939: The Quest for Vital Religion’, PhD Thesis, Flinders University of South Australia, 2016, iii.)
South Australia followed the voluntary principle in religion. The Church of England was not ‘established´ by law, i.e. recognised by law as the State´s church, whereas NSW did. Further, regarding Adelaide’s Church of England members:
Few … openly supported the High Church tradition or the Oxford Movement. Many who loved the church did not love its ‘establishment´ and were as ready as Nonconformists to experiment with the religious equality and the voluntary principle, asking no more of the State than that it should remain Christian in its influence. As the most bigoted dissenter could find no fault with this attitude the Province was tolerably free of sectarian bitterness.[48]
On Hindley/Blythe Street, behind the pioneer church Holy Trinity, was Mr Coulls’ foundry. Here, Samuel commenced work.
Two years later, the colony experienced upheaval. A mass exodus of men from all strata of society seeking gold in Victoria. Samuel stayed.
The society the family had entered was markedly unrestrained compared with England’s class structure. Governor Grey described Adelaide’s respectability as:
… not monopolised by men of wealth and property. … not by the destination he had arrived at, but according to the road he travelled, and the five roads to respectability in Adelaide were early arrival, thrift, temperance and its illegitimate offspring abstinence, party, and the ownership of land.[49]
Samuel ticked all five criteria. However, respectability was not his end goal—becoming respected was the consequence of the road he travelled as a Wesleyan Cornishman.
Flourishing Business
Thomas Barlow (an active Congregationalist and temperance advocate) and family arrived in January 1853. On the voyage six adults and 53 children die.[50] Thomas and Samuel went into a partnership as Carvosso & Barlow, Coachbuilders, Hindmarsh Square.[51] They soon established a strong relationship with the Rounsevell’s near-monopoly coaching business. Samuel’s daughter Louisa married William ‘Ben’ Benjamin Rounsevell at [Samuel’s], Tusmore estate, on 14 March 1864.
In 1855, Samuel returned to JG Coulls’ premises and commenced business in his own name. Samuel’s son Baker Banks was turning 14 years. Thomas Barlow’s three sons, George, Joseph, and Ebenezer, followed their father into the Barlow business.
During Samuel’s first decade in Adelaide, the colony’s population doubled and acreage under cultivation increased sevenfold. These unimaginable increases created fast-expanding markets for Samuel and other coachbuilders.
‘Samuel … built coaches, agricultural equipment and—in good Cornish fashion—the steam engines … used as pumps for firefighting’.[52]
Samuel won the contract to build the third-class railway carriages for the new railway to Port Adelaide.[53]
Coachbuilding at Samuel’s works was substantial and used the latest technology/innovation:
‘Mr. Carvosso has just completed, at his extensive works at Blyth-street, a new omnibus for Mr. Opie on the American principle, to run between Adelaide and the Burra. … [with] accommodation for sixteen passengers … The body is very lightly built, and hangs upon leather braces instead of steel springs, this method being found more suitable to the country roads. The whole is less than half the weight of an English omnibus with the same accommodation.’[54]
Only two years earlier, Cobb and Co had imported the first coaches with thick leather straps, called thorough-brace technology. The result was a much smoother, faster ride.[55]
By 1857, Samuel, drawing on his farm upbringing, had expanded into making and selling ploughs and winnowing machines.[56] Samuel applied his innovation skills, working with others to develop new agricultural equipment, including the quadruple plough.[57] A letter to Samuel from Mr Johnson said, ‘Whatever merit there is [for the quadruple plough] I most certainly think it due to you’.[58]
In 1917 an obituary for a former employee, Mr Rowe, notes that in ‘1855 … the coachbuilding establishment of the late Mr. Samuel Carvosso, then the leading maker in Adelaide’.[59] Barlow & Sons may beg to differ!
The locally focussed business culture of Cornwall, with constant technological and institutional experimentation, was imported to South Australia. It was more attractive to small-time local players than to the Metropolitan (or so-called ‘foreign’) investors unfamiliar with the Cornish cost-book method of financing (a simple share based structure without complex legal arrangements).108
Fire Superintendent
Soon after Samuel and Thomas formed Carvosso & Barlow, they secured the housing and running the Imperial Fire Insurance Company’s fire engine.[60] Later, the insurance companies formed the Assistant Fire Brigade and engaged Samuel as the organiser:
The agents of the Imperial, Alliance, and Royal Fire Insurance Companies having instructed Mr. Carvosso to form an additional Fire Brigade of 40 men. … to be employed under Mr. Carvosso´s Superintendence.[61]
Samuel’s approach was not only to superintend but also hands on. It was not beneath him to ‘clambered onto the roof in order to water it down’.[62] His participation in the various fires is well recorded in the newspapers of the day.
Samuel wrote to the newspapers. His letter to the South Australian Register in 1857 expressed his clear thinking on firefighting and how constables should keep the unhelpful crowds at bay from breaking ‘open so many doors and windows’, which fed the fire with oxygen.[63] In 1865, Samuel was still active, responding in ‘a few minutes’ with the fire brigade and No. 2 hose reel to a fire in Hindley Street.[64]
The Government met in 1858:
‘… attended by Messrs. Carvosso and Hills, from whom they received some valuable further information relative to the proposed Fire Brigade.[65]
Four years later, in November 1862, the Government formed the brigade. This was the ancestor of the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service,[66] now ‘one of the oldest legislated (government) fire services in the world´.[67]
Community Life
In November 1860, Samuel was elected to the City Council for Gawler Ward. ‘Such was his popularity, concern for the citizens, zeal for hard work and astuteness as a businessman’.[68]
Samuel was also appointed to the management committees of the:
- Agricultural and Horticultural Society
- United Trades Mining Association.
Samuel, on jury service on 19 May 1855, interrupted the court and asked for the clarification quoted below:
A Juror [Samuel] requested the Court to call Mr. Tolmer to give some explanations, … Mr. Tolmer said … seen a bushranger, taken at Yorke’s Peninsula, remove a handcuff with a piece of string in little more than a minute.[69]
As in Cornwall, Samuel quickly saw the core issue. The judge was ‘inclined to deal leniently´, so only fined the now ex-constable, Henry Dewhurst, £10.
Samuel showed grace to a theft from his unfinished row of houses in Grote Street, 1856:
Mary Stewart … caught the previous evening … Mr. Carvosso, … declined to prosecute her for the pieces of wood she was found carrying away, and she was discharged.[70]
Building and Investment Societies
By the mid-1850s, Samuel, respected in business and finance, was made a director of four building societies:
- The [Second] South Australian Building and Investment Society[71]
- Second South Australian Building and Investment Society[72]
- The Sun Land, Building, and Investment Society[73]
- The Atlas Land, Building and Investment Society.[74]
These directorships and re-appointments showed Adelaide’s call for Samuel’s business skills, without favour of background.
A fellow director, Henry Ayers (1820–1897), had immigrated as a humble carpenter with his wife Elizabeth in 1840 with free passage. ‘The [Burra] company paid up to 15 dividends of 200% in its first five years. This made some of the shareholders wealthy men.[75] He made a fortune from the Burra copper mine, became knighted in 1872, and was premier for seven short periods[76]. This proved the freedom to rise through the classes. Ayers’s Church of England membership may have led him on a different path to his dissident colleagues. Ayers´s 1860s mansion on North Terrace is a testament today to the successful rise of Ayers.
Crinnis Mine
Further, Samuel was a board member and acting secretary for the Crinnis Mine, Angaston. The mine employed 20 men in November 1858. It reported that ‘a small [copper] load has been borne out in the 13th fathom (24 m) level´.[77]Henry Ayers was a co-director.
Church life
Revivals
Throughout the 1800s, there were rolling outbreaks of Wesleyan revivals in the colony. Samuel saw over 70 of the recorded revivals.[78]
The following examples of these revivals continued to affirm Samuel´s worldview.
The 1862–1865 revival at the Pirie Street (Adelaide city) Wesleyan [Methodist] Church during the appointment of the Rev. John Watsford. Many reported conversions took place during the ‘six months Pirie Street lived in an atmosphere of revivalism’.[79]
Pirie Street church (seating 1,300) was ‘crowded Sunday after Sunday´:
By 1866, [the] combined Methodism membership,[80] at 7,626, was five times as large as the two next largest denominations – Anglicans at 1,439 and the Congregationalists at 1,417. Neither the Anglicans nor the Congregationalists embraced revivalism.[81]
[From Good Friday 1867, for] two to three months, ‘showers of blessings’ visited the three Adelaide Wesleyan circuits during special services.[82]
The cathedral-size Kent Town Wesleyan Methodist Church opened on Sunday, 6 August 1865. Rev William [´Californian´] Taylor presided over the 5,000 gathered. This became Samuel´s second eldest son William´s church.[83]
Church Societies
Baker Banks Carvosso, Samuel’s elder son, was well known as an earnest advocate of the Temperance Movement, especially in connection with the Sons of Temperance.[84] He also played an active role in the protestant churches’ formation the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1886 and The Women’s Suffrage League of South Australia in 1888. Methodists by sheer numbers played the greater role. This reflected the Wesleyan ‘deep sense of social responsibility´.[85]
William, the younger son, was active as the Literary Secretary of the Norwood Wesleyan Mutual Improvement Society.[86] Samuel´s hosted the Society’s picnics at his 33 acre Tusmore estate. This included 2 January 1865 for the New Year’s Holiday and 28 December 1865 for the Foundation of the Colony Holiday.[87], [88]
Singing
Several newspaper articles refer to Samuel leading a choir or a party of his friends at various functions. His Memoriam also states he was:
… remembered for the active part he took in connexion with the choirs, first of the Pirie St Wesleyan Church [1849f], and [later], … Archer St [Wesleyan] Church. … He was endowed by nature with a powerful voice, and this he placed at the disposal of the church when occasions arose.[89]
At Archer Street church, with ‘leader, Mr. Carvosso, … they always had singing of the best kind.203
His powerful voice would have been advantageous when he was acting in his role as Fire Superintendent, directing men above the din of fire and crowd. Singing was a powerful part of revivals.
Land
Owning land was a fundamental desire in the 19th century, and no less so in Adelaide. Samuel purchased/leased land in Blythe and Grote streets, central business district, Stepney Street, Melbourne Street[90] and leased the Tusmore estate with its Knightsbridge house (demolished in the 1980s).[91]
At the Annual Ploughing Match dinner, the vice-chairman proposed a toast to ‘the land we live in’ saying ‘it is a happy land’ and that in ‘England, they could not have owned land, but they could here and transfer it too, thanks to the Torrens [Title] Act’[92] (an 1858 South Australian invention adopted worldwide).
Financial Hardship
In 1866, wheat exports dropped to one-third of the previous year’s level.[93] Britain was in the grip of the ‘Panic of 1866’ banking crisis, and ‘an international financial downturn’[94] harshly impacted Samuel’s cash flow. The final straw came when ‘Mr. Dean, one of his friends, failed in July 1866 [leaving Samuel] … in a hopeless state of insolvency’. His Honor said ‘… there was no suggestion of improper conduct on Mr. Carvosso’s part … his books were well kept’.[95]
Samuel may have reflected on the 1862 Wesleyan Mutual Improvement Association’s lecture on business; ‘Accommodation bills had introduced ruin and misery into families to a fearful extent’.[96] But, sustained by his faith, he did not lose his indomitable spirit.
Revived and Restored
In 1867, Samuel secured work in Port Lincoln as the Clerk of Works for the jetty extension.[97]
He also managed the works on the Court House, Police Station, and Gaol, and supervised the Flinders Monument restoration and facing with marble (1867).[98]
While there, the New Wesleyan Church choir was ‘under the able conduct of Mr. Carvosso’. Daughter Jane Anna’s singing ‘was much admired and appreciated’.[99]
Samuel then relocated in 1869 as the Clerk of Works for the new jetty at Mulgundawa, Lake Alexandrina.[100], [101]
Later, Samuel and Louisa joined their son William in Kooringa (now Burra).[102] Samuel advertised as a coach builder and William as a draper. In August 1870, Samuel was elected jury foreman for a murder case. The accused was acquitted.
They stayed until 1872 when William moved to Wallaroo, where copper mining was taking off.[103]
Nature is Spent
Samuel had lost two brothers in his last three years. His eldest brother, Robert Samuel, died in Cornwall, November 1871, and the youngest, John Francis, died in Adelaide, April 1874. He had one surviving brother, William Frederick, and a sister, Alice Mitchell Hearle (nee Carvosso). Both were in Cornwall. His children were well-married, believers, and thriving. He had nine grandchildren.
Samuel had endured failing health. ‘For the last three years, he had been gradually declining until nature seemed spent’[104] – a life fully lived. He had been living in Carvo Cottage, Stepney, the land now part of Linde Reserve. He was buried on 1 December 1874 in Plot 119, Walkerville Wesleyan Cemetery, South Australia. Louisa died on 26 March 1876 and was buried in the same plot now containing seven other family members.[105]
His obituary speaks of his singing contribution and how he encouraged his children to faith:
He lived to see every member of his family attained to manhood and womanhood and become members of the Wesleyan church.[106]
No headstone survives.
Samuel´s Obituary made note of some of his children as follows:
… The eldest son is Mr B. B. Carvosso of North Adelaide, and Mr W. Carvosso of Kadina are both local preachers in connection with the Wesleyan Church; … Of the daughters, one is married to W.B. Rounsevell, Esq., J.P., [M.P.,] of Mount Crawford, and one to the Rev. J. Leggoe, a Wesley missionary in Fiji..[107]
CONCLUSIONS
Samuel was immersed in rolling revivals throughout his life. These continued to influence his faith and view of the world and his contribution to the Paradise of Dissent.
Wesleyan ‘vital religion’ has been demonstrated by Samuel’s public character and acts. Samuel’s story provides the lay businessman input to the Paradise of Dissent.
Samuel had received since birth the importance of faith, a personal relationship with God, and the integration of faith with his working life. This he lived.
This paper demonstrated that the Cornish Wesleyans contributed to the formation of a South Australia democratic and egalitarian culture, eschewing rank and status over getting things done. The quest for power was not a primary aim. Though there was a deliberate separation of church and state, the Wesleyan emphasis on practical faith and reason based learning, informed the state culture. This was distinct from the stronger retention of English rank and status barriers in the eastern state/colonies, as explored by Pike[108].
Samuel was one of the many Cornish who contributed to South Australia’s early Industry and Commerce. He was respected for his ‘hard work and astuteness as a businessman’. He played leadership roles including:
- Coachbuilder – a leading maker in Adelaide using the latest technology
- Innovator – manufacturer of ploughs, winnowing machines
- Fire superintendent – demonstrated both his ‘jumping in’ can do character and his contribution to the forming of the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service
- Various boards – contributing to commerce
- City of Adelaide – Councillor
- Church Life – led singing
- Clerk of Works – Pt Lincoln
- Court Jury Duty – frank Cornish nature and his ‘fear God, not man’ character.
The above confirms Governor Grey’s observation that the roads to respectability included ‘thrift, temperance and its illegitimate offspring abstinence’. The Wesleyans ticked these boxes. However, respectability was not their end goal—becoming respected was the consequence of the road they travelled as a Wesleyan Cornishman.
Samuel’s life provides insight into the breathtaking opportunities for settlers in the early decades and how their worldview provided a narrative of service.
People live for a short while on this earth, yet some do mighty deeds during their time. People fade from the pages of history, often leaving little or no historical memory in their community and descendants. Yet, for a time, they have occupied centre stage, some longer, some shorter, but all perform great and heroic deeds [109]. Samuel Carvosso’s was a life lived to the full, engaged with those around him. A life lived in the fast lane. He was memorable, likeable, complex, honest, generous, yet flawed (as we all are). He lived a Wesleyan life integrating a personal faith in his Lord with the church, his work, and the broader community.
NOTE: This paper is a digest of the book by John A Carvosso, Samuel Carvosso – Coachbuilder and much more 1814–1874, www.johnacarvosso.com, and augmented with historical interpretation and personal opinion.
JOHN ALLEN CARVOSSO
Author
John Allen Carvosso was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1952. He is a direct descendant of Cornishman Samuel Carvosso, an ‘old colonist’.
John is a retired engineer, having spent his first graduate years in the UK and Saudi Arabi, followed by four years in the Queensland, NSW and the Northern Territory, then settling back in Adelaide. He had a keen technical interest in specialising in piping, associated equipment, yet enjoyed roles in project and engineering management. He is a member of Engineers Australia, holding chartered status. He rose through the engineering ranks to the role of Technical Director with AECOM.
John´s educational qualifications include a Bachelor of Engineering and a Diploma in Technology Management. He also qualified as a registered project manager with the AIPM.
John has been a committed Christian all his life with a keen interest in Cornish Methodism and how it impacted his ancestors.
The book on which this paper is based, is the fruit of his retirement dream. The project picked up where his father, Rex Samuel Carvosso, left off in 1994. I am indebted to Brian Chalmers and Robert Penner for their encouragement and the insightful material of their respective doctoral papers.
En
[1] People who arrived in the first 10 years of settlement, 1836–1846, are known as ‘Pioneers’ and those who arrived in the next decade, 1847–1856, are known as ‘Old Colonists’. Refer the Old Colonists’. Association (State Library of South Australia, 1916), p 59.
[2] Carvosso, William and Benjamin, A Memoir of William Carvosso – The Efficacy of Faith in the Atonement of Christ, Second Edition (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Book Room, 1835.
[3] George Blencowe, The faithful pastor: A memoir of the Rev. B. Carvosso, (London 1857, J Gladding).
[4] Robert Penner, Swept into the Abyss: A Family History of Cornish Methodism, Missionary Networks and the British Empire, 1789-1885, Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University, USA, 2012.
[5] How ‘Vital Religion’ appears in the Paradise of Dissent:
1. Religious dissenters and their beliefs – Many settlers in South Australia were motivated by a desire for religious freedom and sought a vital religion—one that was deeply personal, heartfelt, and free from the formalism of state-controlled churches.
2. Moral and social influence – The dissenters emphasized vital religion as a force for shaping both personal piety and public morality, influencing the colony’s values and governance.
3. Opposition to state religion – Pike discusses how these religious groups resisted the idea of a state-supported church, emphasizing individual faith and voluntary church participation, which aligns with the principles of vital religion.
[6] John A Carvosso, Samuel Carvosso – Coachbuilder and much more, Greenhill Publishing, 2024.
[7] Robert Penner, p 3, 4.
[8] Robert Penner, p 38, 39.
[9] Tremenheere, ‘Report on the State of Education in the Mining Districts of Cornwall’, p 92, 3.
[10] Robert Penner, p 84, 85.
[11] Paul Cook, The Forgotten Revival – The Cornish Revivals of 1814-1835, Evangelical Times, October 2000, https://www.evangelical-times.org/the-forgotten-revival-2/.
[12] ‘John Wesley on Work and Economics’, Grateful to the Dead (blog), 9 June 2013, https://gratefultothedead.com/2013/06/09/what-does-john-wesley-teach-us-about-work-and-economics/.
[13] Carvosso, William and Benjaminp 62.
[14] Carvosso, William and Benjamin, p 63.
[15] Carvosso, William and Benjamin, p 64.
[16] Carvosso, William and Benjamin, p 66.
[17] Carvosso, William and Benjamin, p 44.
[18] George Blencowe, p 1.
[19] ‘Alice Carvosso Obituary’, Religious Intelligence, February 1815, p 139–140.
[20] Carvosso, William and Benjamin, p 198.
[21] Max Stansall, Alive to the Great Work – Stories and Artifacts from Wesley Church Museum, Hobart 1820–1977(Hobart, Tasmania, 1999),p 30.
[22] Max Stansall, p 52.
[23] Robert Penner, p 83.
[24] Robert Penner.
[25] Ian Bradley, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians, 2nd edn., (Oxford: Lion, 2006), p 15–28.
[26] ‘Samuel Carvosso Baptism 1814’, accessed 5 April 2023, https://www.cornwall-opc-database.
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[27] ‘North Audley Street: West Side – British History Online’, accessed 26 August 2022, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol40/pt2/pp109-110.
[28] Carvosso, William and Benjamin, p 244.
[29] ‘Cornwall Family History Society – Church Records’, 2 September 2023, https://www.cornwallfhs.com/church-records/.
[30] Alfred Geoffrey Bannister, Her Pioneers – Hack, Winchester, Carvosso, Puschner (Walkerville, South Australia: Alfred Geoffrey Bannister, 2022), p 101.
[31] ‘Juror, Mr. Carvosso’, Royal Cornwall Gazette, 10 July 1840, p 2, 3.
[32] ‘S Carvosso Coach Builder Truro’, Royal Cornwall Gazette, 25 March 1842, p 1.
[33] ‘Samuel Carvosso Commences Business in Penzance’, Royal Cornwall Gazette, 7 June 1844, p 3.
[34] East, Ronald, A South Australian Colonist of 1836 and His Descendants: The East Family
[35] Deacon, From a Cornish Study: Essays on Cornish Studies and Cornwall, p 11.
[36] ‘A Millennium of Macroeconomic Data for the UK The Bank of England’s Collection of Historical Macroeconomic and Financial Statistics Version 3.1’, August 2018, https://www.escoe.ac.uk/research/historical-data/capital-and-productivity/.
[37] Douglas Pike, p 3.
[38] ‘Samuel Carvosso Sale’, London Times, 3 November 1848, 20011 edition.
[39] ‘Shipping Intelligence – Carvossos and C Banks’, Adelaide Observer, 17 February 1849, p 2.
[40] ‘Middling class’ refers to those of social fluidity, and upward mobility, compared to more established middle class people.
[41] F.R.S. Jago, ‘Presidential Address of the Royal Institution of Cornwall’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 1874, p 3–18.
[42] Robert Penner, p 7.
[43] ‘Port Phillip Shipping – Duke of Bedford Arrival’, Argus, 5 February 1852, p 2.
[44] ‘Emigration from Cornwall to South Australia before 1851’, accessed 7 January 2022, http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~triplett/history/cornwall to south australia.htm.
[45] Douglas Pike, p 387.
[46] Douglas Pike, p 387.
[47] Brian Chalmers, p iii.
[48] Douglas Pike, p 249.
[49] Douglas Pike, p 509, 10.
[50] ‘Concerning People – Barlow Arrived Fifty Years Ago’, The Register, 19 January 1903, p 4.
[51] ‘Advertising – Carvosso & Barlow’, South Australian Register, 12 September 1854, p 3.
[52] Robert Penner, Swept into the Abyss: A Family History of Cornish Methodism, Missionary Networks and the British Empire, 1789-1885, p 371.
[53] Ron Stewien, A History of the South Australian Railways. Vol. 1, The Early Years, 1st ed., vol. 1 (Melbourne, Victoria: ARHS Victorian Division, 2007), p 227.
[54] ‘Ominbus’, South Australian Register, 15 September 1856, p 3.
[55] Kathy Riley, ‘Cobb and Co’, Cobb & Co Coaches: Historical Transport (blog), 18 October 2011, https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2011/10/cobb-co-coaches-historical-transport/.
[56] ‘Samuel Carvosso Winnowing Machines’, South Australian Register, 21 February 1857, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article49765917.
[57] ‘Quadruple Plough Demonstration’, South Australian Register, 19 May 1857.
[58] ‘Letter to Ed – the Quadruple Plough’, South Australian Register, 22 May 1857, p 3.
[59] ‘Mr. William Rowe.’, Observer, 26 March 1910, p 2.
[60] ‘Engine House’, South Australian Register, 8 May 1855, p 3.
[61] ‘Additional Fire Brigade’, Adelaide Observer, 21 July 1855, p 8.
[62] ‘Destructive Fire Hindley St’, South Australian Register, 3 December 1855, p 3, http://nla. gov.au/nla.news-article49297273.
[63] ‘Letter to the Editor – Fires’, South Australian Register, 18 November 1857, p 3.
[64] ‘Fire in Hindley Street 21 Sep’, South Australian Register, 21 September 1865, p 2.
[65] ‘Municipal Corporation – Proposed Fire Brigade’, South Australian Weekly Chronicle, 2 October 1858, p 4.
[66] Page and Bryant, Muscle and Pluck Forever!: The South Australian Fire Services, 1840-1982 (Adelaide: South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service, 1983), p 44.
[67] Metropolitan Fire Service, ‘SAMFS History’, Text, Metropolitan Fire Service, 22 October 2021, South Australia, https://www.mfs.sa.gov.au/about-us/our-history.
[68] Bannister, Her Pioneers – Hack, Winchester, Carvosso, Puschner, p 107.
[69] ‘A Juror – Queries Bushrangers Handcuffs Removal’, South Australian Register, 19 May 1855, p 3.
[70] ‘Row of Buildings in Grote Street’, South Australian Register, 11 August 1856, p 2.
[71] ‘The South Australian Building and Investment Society’, South Australian Register, 6 February 1855, p 2.
[72] ‘The Atlas Land, Building and Investment Society – Directors … Mr S. Carvosso’, Adelaide Times, 21 July 1855, p 4.
[73] ‘The Sun Land, Building And Investment Society – Directors … S Carvosso’, Adelaide Times, 18 September 1856, p 4.
[74] ‘The Atlas, Land, Building and Investment Society’, Adelaide Times, 26 July 1855, p 4.
[75] ‘Burra – Dividends’, Newcrest Mining Limited (blog), accessed 30 January 2023, http://www.cadiavalleyheritage.com.au/copper-mining/copper-mining-and-smelting-history/burra/.
[76] ‘Henry Ayers’, in Wikipedia, 2 April 2022, https://en.wikipe–ia.org/w/index.php?title=Henry_Ayers&oldid=1080613564.
[77] ‘Crinnis Mine – A Special General Meeting of Shareholders – S Carvosso’, South Australian Advertiser, 27 September 1860, p 1.
[78] Brian Chalmers, ‘Methodists and Revivalism in South Australia, 1838-1939: The Quest for “Vital Religion”’, p 316–25.
[79] Brian Chalmers, p 76.
[80] Note: Membership numbers only represented part of a congregation and were accorded to those who were members of a Wesleyan Class (home church) during the week.
[81] Brian Chalmers, p 65.
[82] Brian Chalmers, p 39.
[83] Brian Chalmers, p 320.
[84] ‘Samuel Carvosso Obituary’.
[85] Hunt, This Side of Heaven, History of Methodism in South Australia (Adelaide: Lutheran Pub. House, 1985), p 178.
[86] ‘Norwood Wesleyan Mutual Improvement Association – W Carvosso Literary Secretary’, South Australian Advertiser, 21 June 1866, p 1.
[87] ‘Norwood Wesleyan Mutual Improvement Society Picnic – Carvossos Tusmore’, South Australian Register, 4 January 1865, p 2.
[88] ‘Norwood Wesleyan Mutual Improvement Society Picnic – Carvossos Tusmore’, p 2.
[89] ‘In Memoriam – Mr. S. Carvosso’, 1874.
[90] Land Title Transactions, State Records of South Australia: Memorial 90/94, 282/171, LXIII/31, LXXX/231.
[91] Warburton, The paddocks beneath: a history of Burnside from the beginning, 1981, p 75.
[92] ‘Dry Creek Annual Ploughing Match – Samuel Carvosso Gave Plough for First Prize’, South Australian Advertiser, 4 August 1860, p 3.
[93] Boothby, The Adelaide Almanack Town and Country Directory, and Guide to South
Australia (1868), p 35.
[94] ‘Panic of 1866’, in Wikipedia, 28 February 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Panic_of_1866&oldid=1142139351.
[95] ‘Samuel Carvosso, South Australian Register, 23 October 1866 – Insolvency Hearing Fri 2 Nov 1866’, p 3.
[96] ‘Adelaide Wesleyan Mutual Improvement Association – Lecture on Business’, Adelaide Observer, 29 November 1862, p 7.
[97] ‘Samuel Carvosso – Pt Lincoln Clerk of Works’, South Australian Register, 4 June 1867, p 2.
[98] ‘Port Lincoln, Flinders’s Monument’, South Australian Weekly Chronicle, 16 November 1867, p 7.
[99] ‘New Wesleyan Church, Port Lincoln’,South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA, Saturday 28 September 1867 –Page 6.
[100] ‘Mulgundawa Jetty’, Mapcarta, accessed 30 October 2023, https://mapcarta.com/28786162.
[101] ‘Mulgundawar Jetty – S Carvosso’, South Australian Chronicle and Weekly Mail, 31 July 1869, p 3.
[102] The township of Kooringa, now part of Burra, was the property of the South Australian Mining Association which also owned the mine.
[103] Josiah Boothby, The Adelaide Almanack Town and Country Directory, and Guide to South Australia … (1871) (Adelaide, South Australia), p 83, accessed 29 April 2022, https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj–2942096258.
[104] ‘Samuel Carvosso Obituary’,
[105] From Scott Reardon, Acting Chief Executive Officer, Town of Walkerville, Email 1 August 2022.
[106] ‘Samuel Carvosso Obituary’.
[107] ‘Samuel Carvosso Obituary’.
[108] Pike, p 2.
[109] In The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien explores the nature of Men as mortal beings who, despite their short lives compared to Elves, perform great and heroic deeds.
John A Carvosso – author 