Career
He had spent a considerable part of his life being a missionary in Fiji. Rev Lelean served in Fiji for 36 years. Other variants of the name are Lalean, Le Lean and Le Lane.
Rev Charles Lelean"s great-great-great-grandfather, James Lelean was a contemporary of the great English evangelist, John Wesley.
Rev Wesley had referred to Mr James Lelean as the kind farmer who showed him kindness amongst a hostile mob when he visited Mevagissey, Cornwall in 1753. The buckles are now in the Wesley Museum, City Road, London.
The Cornish Will Abstracts of 1777 - 1781 however records James Lelean as a fisherman of Mevagissey. C.O Lelean"s grandfather, John moved to Australia in the 1800s.
Rev C.O Lelean married Edith Annie Shoebridge in April 1897 in Bushy Park, Tasmania, daughter of William Ebenezer Shoebridge and Anne Benson Mather.
They had one daughter, Ella Lelean. Edith Lelean died in Fiji on 15 May 1906. The early Methodist missions in Fiji served as education centres where students were taught to read and write as well as a rudimentary knowledge of medicine.
This laid the foundations of formal education in Fiji.
Fijian Methodist Ministers and Catechists were not only instrumental in spreading the Christian Gospel, but were also very effective in showing Fijians the benefits of literacy and proper hygiene. Rev C.O Lelean spent twenty years of his service in Fiji as Senior Superintendent of the Davuilevu Mission and principal of the Methodist Theological College from 1914 to 1934.
He succeeded Reverend William Bennett as principal of the Fiji Methodist Theological College which was moved from Navuloa to Davuilevu in 1907. Rev C.O Lelean had impacted numerous lives and generations of Fijians through his long and dedicated service and was a much loved minister.
