Baillie, Andrew Welcome (1895-1978)
Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference
ANDREW WELCOME BAILLIE, M.A., B.D.: knew the rigours of pioneering missionary days from the very first. He was born in a wagon at Bethany Mission Station near Bremersdorp in Swaziland on 28th February 1895. His father, at one time an agricultural adviser in Southern Africa, had been ordained into the ministry of the Baptist Church and returned with his wife to Africa to take up mission work. This dedication and evangelical fervour was passed on to their son. Andrew received his education in England at the Bede School, Sunderland, and throughout the First World War served with the R.A.M.C.
In 1919 he entered Hartley College to train for the Primitive Methodist ministry and was ordained in 1923 after serving as a probationer in Oldham. His circuits thereafter were: Oldham IV, York I, Biddulph, Mountain Ash, Risca, Newport (Salop), Wakefield, Haworth and Oakworth, Wishaw, Ramsey (Parliament Street) and Allendale. It was in Allendale that his first wife died after a long illness during which she was helped by her husband’s devoted care. Later he married Mary Temperley whose family had been workers in Allendale Methodism for many years.
He wore his scholastic successes lightly but his help and advice to younger colleagues and his knowledgeable contributions to Fellowship of the Kingdom groups were highly valued. His preaching was marked by evangelical conviction and his own experience of God’s love. He was meticulous in all his responsibilities. He loved children and used his gift for writing in producing plays and pageants for them.
His years of retirement in Allendale were very happy. He continued to preach and spent his leisure in the garden, solving chess and mathematical problems, writing poetry and being, as he called it, ‘an amateur meteorologist’. During his last illness he asked that one of the hymns at his funeral service should be ‘O happy day that fixed my choice’. It was sung with conviction and joy as he would have wished. He died on 19th January 1978 in the eighty-third year of his life and the fifty-seventh year of his ministry.
Family
Andrew was born on 28 February 1895 in Swaziland. His missionary father was named John Baillie.
The 1911 census describes Andrew as a civil service student.
He married Lilian Nelson (1893-1958) in the summer of 1923 at Hull, Yorkshire.
He married Mary Temperley (1903-1995), a teacher, in the summer of 1962 in Allendale, Northumberland.
Andrew died on 19 January 1978 in Allendale, Northumberland.
Circuits
- Hartley
- 1921 Oldham IV
- 1924 York I
- 1927 Biddulph
- 1929 Mountain Ash
- 1932 Risca
- 1933 Newport
- 1935 Wakefield
- 1940 Haworth
- 1945 Wishaw
- 1949 Ramsey Parl St
- 1955 Allendale
- 1960 Hexham (Sup)
References
Methodist Minutes 1978/68
Who’s Who in Methodism 1933
W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990
Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers
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