John Youl

Individual, P003

John Youl 1773-1827 - only known portrait - as a child

Biography
The Reverend John Youl, (Chaplain to Port Dalrymple – first incumbent of St. John’s Church, Launceston)
The Reverend John Youl (1773 - 1827) was born at Epsom, Surrey, England, in 1777. He received an English education, and when he was 23 he was sent with a group of men by the London Missionary Society to Tahiti.
The mission was not a great success. Some of the members lost their lives and all but two were expelled from Tahiti. John Youl was one of those expelled. He failed to gain weight in the fattening pens, and was rejected as a tasty meal by the cannibals. He gained his freedom, and no doubt that of his friends, by being able to shave thirty of the tribesmen with his cut-throat razor without spilling one drop of blood.

The missionaries made their escape and by 1807 John Youl was at Port Jackson and there he met with a group of Non-Conformists, who had formed a settlement at Portland Head, on the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales. In 1808 this group formed the ‘Portland Head Society for the Promoting of Christian Knowledge and the Education of Youth’.
In 1809 this Society built on Ebenezer Mount a small building to be used as a church and school. It still bears the name ‘Ebenezer Church’ and is claimed by the Presbyterians as the oldest one in Australia. John Youl became its first minister and school teacher.

In 1809 John Youl married Jane Loder, daughter of ‘Sergeant’ George Loder, local gaoler and pound keeper. Youl worked in New South Wales for six years and then returned to England where he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Chester on 15th March 1815 and in June the same year he was ordained priest by the Bishop of London. He returned to New South Wales with an appointment as chaplain at Port Dalrymple, Van Diemen’s Land.
The Reverend Youl was detained in Sydney until he could take up his appointment at Port Dalrymple in 1819. He arrived there in November and settled at George Town, making regular seasonal visits up the Tamar to Launceston.
In 1824 the main settlement was moved from George Town to Launceston and the Reverend Youl became a resident of Launceston. The building in the settlement first used for worship was a converted blacksmith’s shop. It also served as a school and court-house.

In September1824 the foundations were begun for a church, and on 28th December, 1824, the corner stone was laid with great ceremony. The land, set in the bush away from the river and the houses, had been consecrated the previous year, 1823, by the Reverend Samuel Marsden of Sydney, the senior chaplain of the two colonies.
On the memorable day of Friday, 16th December 1825 the Reverend John Youl first opened the new St. John’s Church for divine service. It was in a very unfinished state. The galleries were not fitted and the tower was incomplete. Youl opened a public subscription to purchase an organ. He took an interest in the labours of a prisoner at the Launceston Goal who was making a cast-iron clock for the church. This was to be the first town clock.
Unfortunately the Reverend Youl did not keep diaries of his life’s work for the church, but the registers of the parish dating from his first visit in 1819, show the magnitude of his work. His parish extended to all the settled areas in the north of the island, and included duties at the church, the gaol and the factories where the female prisoners were, the schools and the condemned cell.

The Reverend Youl did not live to see his church completed as on 26th March 1827 he died as a result of hard work and ill-health. He was buried in what became the Cypress Street Burying Ground. The St. John’s Church building itself, particularly the remaining original western end, is the most important testimony to his life and work.
John and Jane Youl had nine children. The Government had given the Reverend Youl 200 acres of valuable land beyond the Norfolk Plains area, and after her husband’s death, Jane moved onto their property called ‘Symmons Plains’ with her family. The Reverend Youl’s glass chalice was taken to Symmons Plains and only returned to St John’s Church in 1973 when a young descendant of John Youl, The Reverend David Lewis, was appointed the church as assistant curate. Jane Youl died on 19th July 1877. Direct descendants of Jane and the Reverend John Youl held the property at ‘Symmons Plains’ until 2012 when the property was sold.

When the old burying Ground was closed in the late 1950s, the Youl family claimed the headstone of John Youl. Since the sale of the property family members had the headstone mended and mounted on a stand and gave it to St John’s where it stands, honoured, in the north ambulatory.
In the church a brass plaque was erected in memory of John Youl, pioneer clergyman. The inscription reads:
IN MEMORY OF REVEREND JOHN YOUL,
ASSISTANT CHAPLAIN TO
THE SETTLEMENT OF PORT DALRYMPLE
IN VAN DIEMEN’S LAND 1819,
OFFICIATING MINISTER AT GEORGE TOWN TILL 1824.
Source
Extract from "Engraved in Memory" J.S. Gill. 1988 See also: "John Youl: the Forgotten Chaplain", Philip C. Blake, Launceston, 1999.
Related objects
The Building of St. John's Church, Launceston (creator)
Memorial Plaque - John Youl (Memorial to)
Memorial Plaque - Revd. John Youl (Memorial to)
Headstone - memorial to John Youl and family members (Memorial to)
John Youl Chalice (contributor)
Related people
Jane Youl (is spouse of)
Hubert Lewis (is related to)
Online Sources
Australian Dictionary of Biography - John Youl
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/youl-john-2827
Monument Australia - John Youl
https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/people/religion/display/108658-reverend-john-youl
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