Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference
JAMES HENRY BRIGGS: born in 1881. He entered the Primitive Methodist Ministry in 1905. After serving in the East Dereham, Abertillery, and Blackburn circuits he became a chaplain in the first World War. After the war he served as a missionary on the island of Fernando Po in West Africa. Owing to a breakdown in health he returned to service in this country and served in the Church Stretton circuit, but he never really recovered from his breakdown on the mission field and retired in 1930.
He then settled in Wolverhampton, where his services as a preacher and missionary deputation were much appreciated. The death of his wife was a grievous loss from which he never really recovered, but for many years he bore his loneliness and increasing weakness with patient courage. He was a quiet and gracious man, with a genial disposition. He gave of his best in the circuits in which he served, and it was always a regret to him that illness prevented him from continuing his work as a missionary. After a period in hospital he passed peacefully away on 15 December 1958, in the fifty-second year of his ministry and the seventy-eighth of his age.
Family
James was born on 23 February 1881 at Burnley, Lancashire, to parents Thomas Briggs, a hawker (1881), and Nancy Proctor.
Before entering the ministry, James was a lay PM Evangelist (1901). The 1939 register records James working as a sales manager.
He married Elizabeth Anne Parker (b1883) in the summer of 1909 at Burnley, Lancashire. Records identify one daughter.
- Eileen (b1917) – a comptometer operator at a bank (1939); married Martyn K. Collins in 1940
James died on 15 December 1958 at Fleetwood, Lancashire.
Circuits
- 1905 E Dereham
- 1911 Abertillery
- 1914 Blackburn I
- 1915 Chaplain H.M. Forces
- 1919 Blackwood
- 1921 West Africa
- 1926 Church Stretton
- 1928 Bristol V
- 1930 Wolverhampton (S)
References
Methodist Minutes 1959/189
W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990
Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers
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