AustLit

John Henry Sexton was a Baptist clergyman. He married Mary Annie Playford in 1886 just after his ordination.

Sexton ministered at Georgetown, Gumeracha, Morphett Vale and Gawler, where he was the secretary and president of the South Australian Baptist Union and was editor for the Southern Baptist and of The Bible in the World from 1909-1919.

He wrote a literary guide to the Bible, The Classic of the Soul and had the gospels translated and printed in the Aboriginal Aranda language. For thirty-one years from 1911 he was the secretary of the Aborigines' Friends' Association, serving as president from 1943-1848.

Sexton was a member, and honorary secretary of the State Advisory Council for Aborigines from 1918-1940. In 1932, he published a report after speaking with tribal elders about their needs for the Aboriginal people in Central Australia.

Sexton published many pamphlets, including Aboriginal Intelligence, in which he demanded citizenship rights for tribal Aborigines. A selection of his articles were published as Australian Aborigines. He often read proofs for his printers Hunkin, Ellis & King. In old age he and his wife were tended by their daughter Annie, a World War I nurse who had served in Egypt.

Source: Suzanne Edgar, 'Sexton, John Henry (1863-1954)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sexton-john-henry-8390/text14709, accessed 27 March 2013.