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Between December 1844 and June 1845, Gardiner attempted unsuccessfully to establish a mission post in Patagonia with Robert Hunt. He found circumstances much changed from his previous visit and reported that his key contacts were either dead or had been sent away under charges of treachery, and the once powerful Chief Wissale, was much weakened in status due to Spanish Chilean settlements and changing alliances among the indigenous peoples.
The first Irish missionary applicant: Mr Bowen
During this period, we find the first record in the Committee Minutes of an applicant for missionary work who potentially hailed from Ireland, a Mr Bowen. Dr Williams of Woodchester, near Stroud, seems to have been the link between Bowen and the work of the Society and is frequently asked to aid them in their communications with him.
On 10 June 1845, the committee recorded reading a letter from Bowen offering his services to the mission ‘providing no-one else should be found and ordination could be procured for him’. Letters were also read from Williams offering to write to the Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Whately (1787–1863), ‘requesting ordination for Mr Bowen if approved by the committee’, enclosing a copy of said letter for their inspection. On the 12 June, Bowen’s offer is ‘unanimously and thoroughly’ accepted, by the commitee pending response from Dublin on the ordination question.
![[PMS Committee Minutes, 12 June 1845. Courtesy of the CMS Library, Oxford]](https://livingarchive.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/PMS-Committee-Minutes.jpg)
By the 16 June, the Secretary of the committee reported that he had been in communication with Bowen in relation to the decision, and that ‘in the event of the arrangements not being carried into effect now, it should not be binding at any future time’. Four days later, correspondence from Bowen is again noted, assuring the committee that all is being done to secure his ordination through the Bishop of Dublin, after which it is almost a year before his name appears again.
![[PMS Committee Minutes, 20 June 1845. Courtesy of the CMS Library, Oxford]](https://livingarchive.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/PMS-Committee-Minutes-2.jpg)
By the 23 June 1845, the committee had received word from Gardiner that it had not been possible ‘to fulfil the objects of the mission’ and that he and Hunt had set sail back to England. Hunt, in fact, arrived in Cork on the Ganges, while Gardiner reached Greenwich on the Glensilly one week earlier. Despite the setbacks experienced in his travels with Hunt, Gardiner was more determined than ever to continue with plans for the Society. By the autumn of 1845 she was once more travelling to South America, this time with a young Spaniard, Federico González, arriving in Montevideo in November.
Bowen and mission work with Federico González
González had reached Brighton from Spain in June 1845 and appeared before the committee on the 20th of that month. He was a contact through the Methodist missionary, William Harris Rule (1802-1890), who had written recommending him as of ‘firm and consistent character and who was willing to offer himself as a catechist’ (Committee Minutes, 16 June 1845). Margarita Barea, mother of González, had worked as a servant in Rule’s home in Cádiz and, alongside her son, took part in Rule’s bible classes and played a significant role in the establishment of the church in Cádiz. For Gardiner, the young Spaniard was key to the Society because of his linguistic abilities. He believed that knowledge of the Spanish language rendered him ‘an important auxiliary in the prosecution of his preliminary work’ (Committee Minutes, 7 July 1845) and spent considerable time practising his Spanish conversation skills with him while sailing on the Plata to Montevideo.
In November 1845, Gardiner was planning to establish González at Nacimiento, Chile, estimating it would take two months. He was to focus on learning what Gardiner referred to as the ‘Chilidugo’ language, and then proceed across the cordillera to the Pehuenche people. With this in mind, Gardiner wrote to the committee requesting that they find a missionary clergyman or a medical man to join González. This letter does not reach the committee until 9 March 1846, after which point they once again request that Williams contact Bowen to ascertain if he would consider joining González in Nacimiento (Committee Minutes, 16 March 1846). Bowen does not, in the end, travel to work with González and we have no further information on his connection with the Society or relating to his circumstances.
Encounters with Gen. Francis Burdett O’Connor
Meanwhile, in South America, Gardiner’s efforts were fraught with difficulties: illness, as well as political instability in the region, and hostilities to his plans from the Roman Catholic clergy and criollo population made any such progress challenging. The various territorial conflicts in the region forced the travellers to sail on to Valparaíso, Chile, and then on to Cobija Bay before crossing the Atacama desert to Tarija, Bolivia.
![[Port of Cobija,1841. Jean Victor Adam - Voyage autour du Monde executé pendant les années 1836 et 1837 sur la Corvette la Bonite. Image: Public Domain]](https://livingarchive.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Port-of-Cobija.jpg)
Among all these experiences, Marsh notes that, on arrival in Tarija, Gardiner and González met with kindness in the shape of an Irish officer in the Bolivian service, Gen. Francis Burdett O’Connor (1791-1871).
![[Francisco Burdett O'Connor, c. 1860. Photo: Public Doman]](https://livingarchive.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Francisco_Burdett_OConnor.jpg)
O’Connor, born into a prominent, Protestant, Cork family, joined Simón Bolívar’s Irish legion in 1819. He went on to become military governor of Tarija and one of the most significant figures of Latin American Independence. On meeting Gardiner, he reported that he ‘had not said a word in the English language for six years’ (A memoir, p. 289). In March 1846, O’Connor gave the two travellers use of his four houses, on the Pilcomayo river and between Tarija and San Luis, Bolivia.
According to Gardiner’s letters,
“General O’Connor tells us that we have come to the right place, and that the frontier districts between San Luis and Carapari are the most accessible to the Indians. There is no war between them and the Bolivians, although when cattle are stolen, as is sometimes the case, reprisals are made. There was formerly a college of the Jesuits in this immediate neighbourhood. They had no less than twenty-two Missions on the borders of the Chaco, between Carapari and Santa Cruz de la Frontiera, all of which, within about fifty years, have been suppressed. There is now not a single mission in the Chaco, and the whole country is before us. Beyond the Pilcomayo, General O’Connor says, the Indians are as much independent of Bolivia as the natives of China are.”
(A memoir, p. 290)
Gardiner’s correspondence with the committee written between April and June 1846, informs them that having tried to make contact with the indigenous communities on the other side of the Pilcomayo river, they returned to O’Connor’s house but were forced to leave due to swarms of mosquitoes and wasps (Committee Minutes, 19 October 1846). Their legs and feet were so swollen as a result of the insect bites that they could hardly walk. Fever was prevalent in the area of Caraparí at this time, many fleeing the town in a bid to avoid illness, and both men suffered from fevers and/or severe dysentery. Gardiner was unwell and bedbound for at least six weeks. Despite these challenges, at the beginning of October 1846, having met with the Bolivian President, Gardiner received authority to proceed with his plans and started preparing for González to be established in Potosí to learn Quechua, in the hope that we he would proceed to the frontier with another missionary in the near future.
In England, in July 1846, the committee were already advertising for a missionary in The Report (Committee Minutes, 20 July 1846) to burgeon the work to be undertaken by González once settled. It is this request that takes us to our next group of applicants from Ireland in 1847: John Potter, Louisburgh Glebe, West Port, County Mayo; James Rowley, Cartron West, Tubercurry, County Sligo; and George Foulson Cotham, living in Liverpool but an undergraduate student in ‘Dublin College’ (Trinity College Dublin).
Select Bibliography and Sources
Patagonian Missionary Society Committee Minutes, Vol. 1, available via the British Online Archive
Harris, William Rule, Recollections of my life and work at home and abroad : in connection with the Wesleyan Methodist Conference (London: T. Woolmer, 1886)
Jackson, Susan Irene, ‘Methodism in Gibraltar and its mission in Spain, 1769-1842′, Doctoral thesis, (Durham University, 2002).
Marsh, John, A memoir of Allen F. Gardiner, Commander, R.N. (James Nisbet and Co., 1857)
O’Connor, Francis Burdett, Recuerdos de Francisco Burdett O’Connor (Tarija, Imprenta de la Estrella, 1895)
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