Frederick Pratt (minister)
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The Reverend Frederick Vicary Pratt (9 April 1870 – 25 April 1932) was an Australian-born Congregational church minister who served as chairman of the State Congregational Unions of New South Wales (1906–07), South Australia (1909-10) and Victoria (1914–15).[1] He maintained that Australians could hold their own against the world in art, scholarship and sport and believed that Australia would at some time produce a national religious reformer attuned to local conditions.[2]
Pratt was born at Petersham, New South Wales, the seventh child of William Pratt, an English-born pharmacist. He was educated at Newington College commencing in 1883[3] and in 1888 he won the Wigram Allen Scholarship, endowed by Sir George Wigram Allen, for general proficiency. At the end of 1888 Pratt was named Dux of the college and received the Schofield Scholarship.[4] He went up to the University of Sydney and in 1889 graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1892 and a Master of Arts in 1897 with first-class honours in Latin and the university gold medal for logic and mental philosophy.[5] After visiting the other colonies and New Zealand as the travelling secretary of the Student Christian Movement, Pratt studied theology at Camden College and was ordained in 1897. He married Agnes Elizabeth Waddell in the year of his ordination.[6]
