Kaye, Betsey (nee Ashe) (1810-1874)

Transcription of obituary published in the Primitive Methodist Magazine by W. Antliff

Betsey, relict of the Rev. Robert Kaye, P.M. minister, was born at Stockport, June 1, 1810, and died at Preston, July 19, 1874. From childhood she was of a lively, generous, affectionate disposition, and the excellences of her natural disposition were matured and exalted by saving grace. For when she was about twenty-one years of age, through Primitive Methodist agency, she was brought to a saving knowledge of the truth, No sooner had she found salvation than her relations and friends perceived she had been with Jesus. She became remarkably joyful in her experience, and those frivolities in which she had previously, to some extent, indulged, she now rigidly eschewed. The means of grace she attended with remarkable punctuality, and this habit distinguished all her subsequent life. 

When twenty-four years of age she became the wife of Mr. Kaye, who was a very devoted and successful minister, and during all their married life she was indeed a help meet for him. In some of the circuits in which her husband was stationed, she experienced serious difficulties of a temporal kind, but in meekness and patience she held on her Christian course. When it pleased God to summon her beloved husband from her side on earth to his in heaven—which event occurred after they had lived together in unusual affectionateness for twenty-nine years—she felt the trial to be almost overwhelming; but grace was given her to enable her to say, and to say it from the depth of her soul, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” 

She afterwards went to reside with her daughter, wife of the Rev. E. Kershaw, and wherever she temporarily sojourned, the virtues of a devoted Christian were conspicuous in her example. She rejoiced greatly in the prosperity of the church, and cheerfully rendered her best assistance for its promotion. Her class was a favourite means of grace. Little obstacles were not allowed to prevent her attendance. A few weeks before her decease, I and my wife, Mrs. Kaye’s only sister, paid her a short visit in passing through Preston, and when we were leaving her to take the train, she respectfully begged her sister to excuse her going with us to the station, giving as her reason that it was her class night, and she did not like to be absent. 

Her last affliction was short but severe; she was not laid aside entirely more than a few hours. But in patience she possessed her soul. The morning of the Sabbath—the day of her decease—she spent chiefly in earnest prayer, and her last audible words were, ‘‘Happy! happy!” Thus from praying and rejoicing below, she went to continue her sweet Sabbath employment uninterruptedly and eternally above. May her sorrowing children and friends rejoin her in the home of the happy—where sorrow and death are no more!

Family

Betsey was born on 1 June 1810 at Stockport, Cheshire, to parents William and Sarah. She was baptised on 27 June 1810 at Stockport.

She married Robert Kaye (1804-1863), a PM minister, on 6 May 1834 at St John, Deansgate, Manchester. Census returns identify two children.

• Sarah Ann (1836-1900) – a milliner (1861); married Edward Kershaw, a PM minister, in 1865
• Robert James (b1838) – a joiner (1861)      

Betsy died on 19 July 1874.

References

Primitive Methodist Magazine 18746/117

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers