Kempster, Arthur (1860-1892)

Ministry

A transcription of obituary published in the Primitive Methodist Magazine by Thomas E. Currah is attached. Currah writes of his character as follows.

“ His nature was sanguine, mobile, frank and genial; the peculiar and subtle dangers arising out of such social and agreeable qualities, were warded off by the sway of a vigilant conscientiousness. A strong sense of duty and religious conviction gave a firmness and persistency to his facile temperament, as probably nothing else could have done. The religious element was in him naturally much more powerful than any other motive. Of avarice, ambition, love of power, small suspicion, in the vulgar sense, he had none.

He was warm, faithful, and unselfish in his friendships, and being constitutionally optimistic and sunny, his company and conversation were a pleasant tonic to others of his acquaintance who were perhaps afflicted with too much sadness and doubt. There was in him a keen sense of the humorous, and this, joined to his wonderful mimetic gift, always kindly exercised, made him a very agreeable and laughter-moving companion, His good-natured fun and cheerfulness are well remembered by his college confréres, and will always be remembered, though now tempered by a sadness.“

Family

Arthur was born on 18 September 1860 at Leadgate, Co. Durham, to parents Thomas Kempster, a brass founder (1881), and Elizabeth Griffiths.

The 1881 census return describes Arthur as an iron workers plate mill charger.

He married Lizzie Beesley Cousens (abt1867-1931) in the summer of 1890 in the Brentford Registration District, Middlesex. Census returns identify one child.     

• Lizzie Cousens (1891-1988) – a school teacher (1911); married Walter Bainbridge Alwin, an insurance manager (1940), in 1913 in New York, USA

Arthur died on 6 July 1892 at Baldock, Hertfordshire. He died before he was able to take up his appointment to the Dartford circuit.

Lizzie married Archibald Press, a view of government stores (1901), in late 1893.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1885 Richmond & Hounslow
• 1887 Baldock
• 1892 Dartford

References

Primitive Methodist Magazine 1894/65

PM Minutes 1893/15

W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers

Note: Birth records identify that he was born in 1860, not 1861 as stated in the obituary.