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OR, COLONISTS—PAST AND PRESENT.
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to take such a step by the belief that he could there do much good. For some time previously he was engaged in lay-preaching, but the better to qualify himself for a clerical position he went to England in April, 1876, and there became a student at New College, under Dr. Newth. Returned to South Australia in October, 1879, to take charge of the pastorate of the College Park Congregational Church, and retained this position until April, 1883, when failing health caused him to resign. Mr. Searle was an advocate for funeral reform, and his funeral, in accordance with his request, was not marked by the usual symbols of mourning. He left a wife and three children, a brother (Mr. R. Searle), and a mother (Mrs. Searle) well known in connection with philanthropic work in Adelaide.


John Whinham,

FOUNDER of that scholastic institution, Whinham College. He has been all his life an educationist, and is probably the oldest schoolmaster in the colony, if not in the Australian colonies. Born in 1803, at Sharperton, Northumberland, he at an early age evinced a decided bent for the acquisition of knowledge. He would walk miles to hear a scientific lecture, and thought no exertion too great and no toil too hard, so long as he could thereby add to his stores of learning. He displayed an almost equal taste for mathematics and the classics, and under a scholarly Roman Catholic priest qualified himself, by the time he was nineteen years of age, for taking a degree in the University of Dublin; but the sudden illness of a sister and friend, both of whom subsequently died, led him to abandon his intention as he was on the eve of starting for Ireland. He then devoted his attention to teaching, and had a good school in the quiet rustic village of Ovingham, by Newcastle-on-Tyne. His abilities as a teacher were in due course recognised, and he had some