Samuel Leigh (1 September 1785 – 2 May 1852) was a prominent minister and missionary for the Wesleyan Methodist Church in early colonial New South Wales and New Zealand.

After that visit, he went back to England and proposed the establishment of a Wesleyan Missionary Society (WMS) mission for the Māori people of the country.

He left in August 1823 on account of his poor health and returned to Sydney where he worked in the Australian ministry, until 1831, the year that his wife died.

Disagreeing with the severe Calvinistic teachings of Bogue, he decided to become a minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

Initially an assistant to the Reverend Joseph Sutcliffe at Portsmouth, he spent two years on the Shaftesbury circuit before he was ordained in 1814.

He soon moved to a rural location, at Castlereagh, and by 1817, the first Methodist church in Australia had been built there with Leigh opening it in October that year.

Further religious facilities were opened in the locations of Parramatta, Liverpool and at Windsor; at the latter, he laid the first foundation stone to commence the construction of a chapel there.

[1] In 1820, Leigh returned to England and began advocating for a WMS mission in New Zealand and other areas of the South Pacific.

[4] He departed for New Zealand on 1 January 1822 on Marsden's ship, the Active, with a store of trade goods for establishing the mission.

[5] Once there, Leigh based himself at the Bay of Islands where he stayed with William Hall, a CMS missionary, and his wife and focussed on learning the Māori language for the next several months.

The following month he left with Marsden aboard the Brampton but the vessel run aground near Moturoa in the Bay of Islands.

[3] He travelled extensively and at one stage, in 1849, he estimated that he had covered 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi) in a period of just 14 weeks, attending 50 meetings and preaching on 30 occasions.