Rogers, John Harold Charter (1894-1976)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

John Harold Charter Rogers: born in Hull on 5th July 1894. He found his spiritual birthright at home and accompanied his father on preaching journeys in the trap. After leaving school he received experience and training in administration and accountancy and this became the basis for his later reputation as a keen administrator, a methodical superintendent and a devotee of Standing Orders.

He was accepted for the ministry by the Primitive Methodist Conference and spent pre-collegiate years in the Kingstone, Clitheroe, and Dalton and Millom Circuits, He was trained at Hartley College and was privileged to sit at the feet of Dr. A.S. Peake. After his training he served in the South Yorkshire Mission and in the Cwm Circuit. In 1929 he began a fifteen years’ ministry in the Sutton and Kirkby Circuit in Nottinghamshire where during the war he showed special care to the Army units in the area as well as serving in Toc H.

Service in Bebington, Birmingham (Bristol Road) where his skills and patience effected the strong and successful union scheme at Selly Oak, and Newcastle (Staffs, Ebenerer) brought him to retirement in 1965 and for the rest of his ministry he used his preaching gifts, as he loved to do, in the Redditch Circuit and found great happiness among the people. 

A man of stature and strength with a ready wit, he made friends easily. Above all he was a pastor to young and old alike and the administration of the Sacrament of Holy Communion was of special significance to him. His mind, like his study, was tidy and up-to-date; he loved to sing his home-made bass. He believed that a miracle had been wrought when his falling eyesight was restored and he could preach again.

After some months of illness he died on 15th March 1976 in the eighty-second year of his life and the fifty-fifth year of his ministry.

Family

John was born on 5 July 1894 at Hull, Yorkshire, to parents George William Rogers, a master butcher (1911), and Henrietta.

He married Muriel Doris Maude Tinslay (1898-1982) in the summer of 1926 in the Steyning Registration District, Sussex. Birth records identify two children.

• Paul Edwin C. (1930-1980)
• John D.C. (b1933)

John died on 15 March 1976 in the Bromsgrove Registration District, Worcestershire.

Circuits

• 1919 Kingstone
• 1920 Clitheroe
• 1921 Dalton &c
• 1922 Hartley
• 1924 S Yorks Mission
• 1926 Cwm
• 1929 Sutton &c
• 1944 Bebington
• 1951 Birmingham Bristol
• 1956 Newcastle under Lyme Ebenezer
• 1865 Redditch (S)

References

Methodist Minutes 1976/87

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers