Thomas Samuel Grace (16 February 1815 – 30 April 1879) was an English Anglican missionary in New Zealand. He was a member of the

Church Missionary Society The Church Mission Society (CMS), formerly known as the Church Missionary Society, is a British mission society working with the Christians around the world. Founded in 1799, CMS has attracted over nine thousand men and women to serve as mission ...

. He was born in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

, Lancashire, England on 16 February 1815. Grace replaced William Williams at Tūranga in

Poverty Bay Poverty Bay ( Māori: ''Tūranganui-a-Kiwa'') is the largest of several small bays on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island to the north of Hawke Bay. It stretches for from Young Nick's Head in the southwest to Tuaheni Point in the no ...

from 1850 until 1853, during the latter's trip to Britain.

Te Kooti Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki (c. 1832–1893) was a Māori leader, the founder of the Ringatū religion and guerrilla fighter. While fighting alongside government forces against the Hauhau in 1865, he was accused of spying. Exiled to the Cha ...

attended the boarding school at Tūranga during the time Grace was in charge of the mission. He was appointed to Taupo. In 1865 the

Pai Mārire The Pai Mārire movement (commonly known as Hauhau) was a syncretic Māori religion founded in Taranaki by the prophet Te Ua Haumēne. It flourished in the North Island from about 1863 to 1874. Pai Mārire incorporated biblical and Māori spiritua ...

ransacked his house. Grace fled from Taupo to Opotiki and was caught up in the Völkner Incident. He was arrested and put on trial by the Pai Mārire party. He was rescued from captivity two weeks later by a British man-of-war, ''HMS Eclipse'', after an attempt by the Pai Mārire to exchange him for Tauranga chief Hori Tupaea, who was in prison.S. Barton Babbage, "Hauhauism: An Episode in the Maori Wars 1863-1866", chapter 1. A.H & A.W. Reed, Dunedin, 1937
/ref> In the 1870s he rebuilt the mission station at Taupo. His son Lawrence Marshall Grace was Member of Parliament for in the 1880s.

Sources

* D. Grace, ''A Driven Man – Missionary Thomas Samuel Grace 1815-1879: His Life and Letters'', Wellington : Ngaio Press, 2004

References

1815 births 1879 deaths English Anglican missionaries Clergy from Liverpool English emigrants to New Zealand Anglican missionaries in New Zealand {{NewZealand-reli-bio-stub