 At that time, Lax Kw'alaams was without a minister and oriented around a Hudson's Bay Company fort with its attendant social problems.The Church of England had abandoned the community in 1862 when the local Anglican lay missionary, William Duncan (coincidentally, like Crosby, a former tanner from Yorkshire), had taken a portion of his Tsimshian flock to found the nearby utopian Christian community of Metlakatla, B.C.Alfred and Kate Dudoward pressed the Methodist church to commit a missionary to their village, and in 1874 Crosby was sent there.