Martin, Alfred Walter (1899-1988) and Hilda Brown Martin (1888-1938); later Enid Irene Peacock Adrian Martin (1910-1998)

Alfred Walter Martin was a missionary, educator, and administrator from Australia.

A Good Foundation

Alfred Walter Martin (known as Walter) was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on February 16, 1899, the youngest of five children.¹ Raised in a family of devout Anglicans, as a boy Martin wandered into a church one day and chanced to hear a returned missionary from China giving a lantern lecture. He was transfixed, deciding that he would become a missionary himself.²

Martin trained as a government school teacher and at the age of twenty-eight converted to Seventh-day Adventism. Still harboring aspirations to become a missionary, he attended the Australasian Missionary College (AMC) at Cooranbong, New South Wales, and began ministerial studies. He was older than most of the students and came to be affectionately known as “Pop.”³ He did not graduate from the course, but it did enrich his later work.

On January 12, 1932, Martin married Hilda Brown in the Glen Huon Seventh-day Adventist church, Tasmania.⁴ Hilda Brown, born on November 12, 1888, in Franklin, Tasmania, was the daughter of Arthur Brown, a labourer, and his wife Eliza (Watson).⁵ The family belonged to the Methodist faith. When Hilda Brown was only a child, her mother died and she and her father moved to Glen Huon. She later recalled entering the Adventist church one Friday night and dedicating her life to Christ as she sat on the front seat alone in the stillness.⁶ Hilda Brown attended the AMC and graduated from the missionary course in 1914.⁷ She worked as a Bible instructor in the Victorian Conference,⁸ in addition to serving briefly as the young people’s secretary.⁹

Dreams Realized and Shattered

Walter and Hilda Martin had to wait two years for a mission appointment. In the meantime, Walter Martin accepted the position of preceptor of the boy’s dormitory at AMC, and he assisted the principal by teaching some history classes.¹⁰ On January 20, 1934, the Martins sailed from Sydney on the Malaita, bound for the Solomon Islands where Walter Martin was appointed principal of the Batuna Training School, an institution which, in turn, trained many more missionaries.¹¹ All went well until Hilda Martin began to show signs of tuberculosis towards the end of their term of service. On their return to Australia in mid-1937, she was admitted to the Warburton Sanitarium where she died on January 31, 1938.¹² She was buried in the local Wesburn Cemetery.¹³ Martin returned to Batuna and worked there for another term, while doing some translation work, including sections of scripture and elementary primers in the Ulusagi language.¹⁴

Second Marriage

When Martin returned from the Solomon Islands in 1940, he briefly assisted the education secretary at the Wahroonga headquarters office, especially in relation to Pacific Island schools.¹⁵ In the same year, he married Enid Peacock Adrian, a widow who had lost her husband in Fiji in a motor accident. They were married in the Wahroonga church on September 15, 1940.¹⁶ Enid Adrian brought three young children to the marriage, Betty, Lyn, and Jennifer Adrian who retained their father’s surname. Walter and Enid Martin later had one son named Tony.¹⁷

At the time of their marriage Walter and Enid Martin were under appointment to the Tongan Mission where Walter Martin was mission superintendent and principal of the Beulah Training School. Prior to their departure, Martin was ordained to the gospel ministry.¹⁸ Tonga was a small struggling mission field with four churches and less than one hundred baptized members.¹⁹

As the Second World War intensified in the South Pacific region, the Martin family returned from Tonga, and accepted an appointment in the North New Zealand Conference, where Martin served as Sabbath School secretary and assisted in the youth department.²⁰ He was asked to step in as the temporary principal at the West Australian Missionary College (WAMC) in 1947,²¹ and remained in the West Australian Conference until 1949.²²

From 1950 through 1955, Martin was based in Suva, Fiji, filling the roles of education secretary and young people’s secretary in the Central Pacific Union Mission.²³ Responsibility for the temperance and Sabbath School departments were added late in his term.²⁴ In 1956, he moved to Fulton Missionary College where he was principal,²⁵ and later directed the teacher-training program.²⁶

In 1959, Martin temporarily served as principal of WAMC while the full-time principal, Raimund Reye, was on compassionate leave following the loss of his son, Ernest, from a brain tumor.²⁷ Following this assignment, Martin became part of the ministerial team in the Victorian Conference,²⁸ where he remained until his semi-retirement in the 1970s, frequently engaging in hospital visitation in suburban Melbourne. Walter and Enid Martin spent three years, 1975 through 1977, as caretakers of the Mission Hostel at Wahroonga, New South Wales, a transit home for missionaries while travelling to and from the Pacific Islands.²⁹

Retirement

Martin’s boyhood ambition to be a missionary was satisfied through a number of avenues, including actively training more missionaries. In retirement, he and his wife settled at Bonnells Bay, New South Wales,³⁰ where he enjoyed gardening. When he became feeble, he experienced the comforts of the Charles Harrison Memorial Home at Cooranbong, New South Wales. Walter Martin died on October 30, 1988, and was buried in the Avondale Cemetery. Enid Martin moved to the United States and spent her last years in the home of her daughter and son-in-law, Jennifer and Roy Naden. She died on September 23, 1998, and her body was returned to Australia for her burial in Avondale Cemetery.

Sources

Australasian Missionary College Forty-fourth Annual Announcement. Cooranbong, New South Wales: Avondale Press, [1940].

Bickley SDA Church Record of Meetings, 1947-1949. Bickley SDA Church Archives, Bickley, Western Australia.

Butler, L[ance] L. “Alfred Walter Martin.” Record, December 17, 1988.

Butler, L[ance] L. “Life Sketch: Alfred Walter Martin.” Record, December 17, 1988.

District of Franklin. Birth Certificates. Government of Tasmania, Australia.

“Funeral Notices.” The Age (Melbourne, Victoria), 832, February 1, 1938.

Guilliard, E[gbert] H. “Hilda (Brown) Martin.” Australasian Record, February 28, 1938.

[Martin, Hilda.] “A Dying Message.” Australasian Record, February 28, 1938.

Naden, Roy. “Enid Martin.” Record, November 28, 1998.

“News Notes.” Australasian Record, January 1, 1940.

Rampton, F[rank] G. “Martin-Brown.” Australasian Record, February 15, 1932.

Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1919-1983.

Stewart, A[ndrew] G. “Martin-Adrian.” Australasian Record, September 30, 1940.

“Victorian Notes.” Australasian Record, April 8, 1918.

“With their faces toward the mission...” Australasian Record, January 29, 1934.

Notes

1. L[ance] L. Butler, “Alfred Walter Martin,” Record, December 17, 1988, 21.↩

2. L[ance] L. Butler, “Life Sketch: Alfred Walter Martin,” Record, December 17, 1988, 21.↩

3. Ibid.↩

4. F[rank] G. Rampton, “Martin-Brown,” Australasian Record, February 15, 1932, 7.↩

5. District of Franklin, Certificate of Birth no. 1672, (1888), Government of Tasmania, Australia.↩

6. [Hilda Martin], “A Dying Message,” Australasian Record, February 28, 1938, 7.↩

7. Australasian Missionary College Forty-fourth Annual Announcement (Cooranbong, New South Wales: Avondale Press, 1940), 55.↩

8. “Victorian Notes,” Australasian Record, April 8, 1918, 7.↩

9. “Victorian Conference,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1920), 195-196.↩

10. “Australasian Missionary College,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1932), 278.↩

11. “With their faces toward the mission...,” Australasian Record, January 29, 1934, 8.↩

12. E[gbert] H. Guilliard, “Hilda (Brown) Martin,” Australasian Record, February 28, 1938, 7.↩

13. “Funeral Notices,” The Age (Melbourne, Victoria), 832, February 1, 1938, 1.↩

14. L[ance] L. Butler, “Life Sketch: Alfred Walter Martin,” Record, December 17, 1988, 21.↩

15. “News Notes,” Australasian Record, January 1, 1940, 8.↩

16. A[ndrew] G. Stewart, “Martin-Adrian,” Australasian Record, September 30, 1940, 7.↩

17. L[ance] L. Butler, “Life Sketch: Alfred Walter Martin,” Record [South Pacific Division], December 17, 1988, 21.↩

18. Photograph, Australasian Record, December 2, 1940, 5.↩

19. “Tongan Mission,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1943), 72.↩

20. “North New Zealand Conference,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1946), 72-73.↩

21. Bickley SDA Church Record of Meetings, 1947-1949, Bickley SDA Church Archives, Bickley, Western Australia.↩

22. “Workers Directory,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1949), 426.↩

23. E.g., “Central Pacific Union Mission,” Seventh day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1950), 76.↩

24. E.g., “Central Pacific Union Mission,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1954), 85.↩

25. “Fulton Missionary School,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1956), 212.↩

26. “Fulton Missionary School,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1958), 220.↩

27. Milton Hook, personal knowledge from living in the WAMC community from 1949-1959.↩

28. E.g., “Victorian Conference,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1960), 82.↩

29. L[ance] L. Butler, “Life Sketch: Alfred Walter Martin,” Record, December 17, 1988, 21.↩

30. E.g., “Directory of Workers,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1978), 712.