William Pascoe Crook was the first Congregational minister to settle in Australia. His career and work have been commemorated by the placing of a redgum slab in the Collins Street Independent Church. The slab, which is enclosed in a polished cedar case given by A. A. Sleight Proprietary Limited, undertakers, of Flinders Street, has an interesting history. It marked the grave of William Pascoe Crook in the Old Melbourne Cemetery, and after having been exposed to the weather for 76 years, it was removed - still sound and with the inscription clearly legible - in 1922 to the Melbourne General Cemetery. It remained there until it was removed to the church. The inscription is as follows: -

"In Memory of the Rev. William Pascoe Crook, a Zealous and Devoted Missionary in the Marquesan and Society Islands. A Faithful Preacher of the Gospel in New South Wales. Born in Devonshire, England on the 29th April, 1775. Died at Melbourne on the 14th June 1846. He was One of the First Missionaries who left England on the ship "Duff" in the Year 1796"

The Rev. William Pascoe Crook was aged 71 years, when he died in Melbourne on June 14, 1846. He left England with a band of missionaries in August 1796, on the missionary ship "Duff," bound for the South Sea Islands, and landed at Santa Christina, one of the Marquesas Islands in 1797. He stayed there for three years and then returned to London, where he was of great service to the directors of the London Missionary Society, who sent him to the Congregational churches of England as their first missionary deputation. Mr. Crook returned to Australia in 1803 as chaplain of the convict ship "Ocean" which was commissioned under Captain David Collins to form a convict settlement at Port Phillip. In November, 1803, the party landed at Sullivan Bay, now Sorrento, and there Mr. Crook held services, having two congregations and a Sunday school of 77 pupils. The first religious services in Victoria were therefore held by a Congregational minister. Among the children of the Sunday school was a boy, aged 12 years, named John Pascoe Fawkner, who in 1835 became the founder of Melbourne, the pioneer of Congregationalism in Victoria, and the founder of the Collins Street Independent Church.

Captain Collins abandoned the attempt to form a convict settlement, and Mr. Crook went to Sydney. There he began a 'boarding school for young gentlemen,' the first of its kind in Australia. He used his schoolroom on Sundays as a chapel, and there, in August, 1810, with four others, he formed a "church on the Congregational or Independent plan," and at the first church meeting, on August 27, 1810, it was determined "that it was their duty and privilege to administer the sacrament of the Lord's supper," which was done on Sunday, September 2, 1810. That was the first Congregational Church formed in Australia.

In 1817 Mr. Crook, in company with John Williams and other missionaries, went to Tahiti, where he worked as a missionary for 14 years. Returning to Sydney he was actively helpful in the erection of the Pitt Street Church building. He was one of the first four deacons of that church, one of his colleagues was Robert Bourne who became one of the first trustees of the Collins Street Independent Church. In 1840 Mr. Crook visited Melbourne, where his son and daughter-in-law lived, and where his grandson (whom Mr. William Waterfield baptised on February 9, 1840, and who was also named William Pascoe Crook) had just been born. Mr. Crook preached in the Collins Street Independent Church on Sunday, January 16, of that year. His son and daughter-in-law were both admitted as members of the church on May 1, 1840.

A few years after Mr. Crook returned to Victoria, and lived in Melbourne until his death.