William Parkin leaves Congregational church big legacy from success in Adelaide business, parliamentary service
William Parkin (inset) and the Parkin Theological College buildings opened, with Parkin's large legacy to the Congregatinal Church in South Australia, in the former Wavertree mansion on North Terrace in Adelaide's inner east Kent Town, in 1910,
William Parkin followed the strong pattern in 19th Century South Australia of religious Nonconformist/Dissenters achieving in business and politics leading to support of church activities and philanthropy.
From Glastonbury, Somerset, England, Parkin and wife Sarah sailed with free passage for South Australia on the Recovery and arrived at Port Adelaide in 1839. Parkin farmed briefly near Willunga and then opened a drapery in Hindley Street, Adelaide.
Parkin recovered from the 1840-43 economic depression and, by 1856, he had moved into larger premises in Rundle Street with G. W. Chinner as his partner. (John Hodgkiss, another Hindley Street draper of the same era, also went into parliament.) Parkin engaged his nephew John William Parkin to manage the drapery store but later regretted it. He disowned the nephew and sold the business to James Marshall & Co. Parkin was one of the largest shareholders in the Wallaroo and Kadina Tramway Company and he was in the syndicate that took over The Advertiser newspaper in 1864.
With a “comfortable fortune”, Parkin devoted himself to politics, representing the city of Adelaide in the House of Assembly (1860-62) and as a Legislative Council member (1866-77). Parkin was best remembered as a philanthropist and benefactor of the South Australian Congregational Church. He was a prominent and generous member of Thomas Quinton (T.Q.) Stow’s church in Freeman Street, Adelaide, and later attended the Glenelg Congregational Church, conducted by Charles Manthorpe, for 20 years.
Parkin was a member of the committee set up under pastor C. W. Evan to erect the Stow Memorial Church, named after T.Q. Stow, in Flinders Street, Adelaide. Others on the committee were Richard Hanson, Thomas Graves, John Brown, John Davis, Horace Dean, Robert Davenport, Thomas Barlow, William Berry, Samuel Davenport, William Hanson, Henry Giles, Matthew Goods, Carrington Smedley, Clement Sabine, Robert Stuckey, Charles Todd, George White and Alexander Hay.
In 1877, after consulting Richard Hanson and John Brown, Parkin founded a trust to train and maintain students for the Congregational ministry through a gift estimated at £10,000: £8000 in cash and 4160 acres worth £2000 near Palmerston (later Darwin) in the Northern Territory. The Parkin Trust was also to be used to build churches and schools, and to benefit the widows of ministers.
In 1882, he set up the Parkin Congregational Mission of South Australia to maintain missionaries in the less settled parts of the colony, and for aiding 20 widows over 60, chosen by the governors as “worthy of assistance” by giving them £5 each at Christmas. To provide for this, Parkin gave his valuable property in Rundle Street, Adelaide.
When Parkin died in 1889, he left another £16,000 to the church in his will. Two memorial windows were placed in the Glenelg Congregational Church, one by his wife and the other by the governors of this trust and mission.
Parkin Theological College was opened in the Wavertree mansion on North Terrace, Kent Town, in 1910, but the decline of Congregationalism in South Australia led to it closing in 1969. Its few students and large endowments were transferred to the Methodist Wesley College in Wayville, later called Wesley-Parkin College and then the Uniting College.
