Chamberlain, Henry (1878-1966)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

HENRY CHAMBERLAIN: born in Manchester in 1878. After a period of employment in the cotton business he was accepted into the Primitive Methodist ministry from the Manchester Higher Ardwick Circuit and entered Hartley College in 1902. On leaving college in 1904 he served in the following circuits: Sheringham, Clitheroe, Bolton, Accrington, Earlestown (during the 1914-18 war when he served as a chaplain at the Winwick Military Hospital), Hyde, Torquay, Stockport, West Bromwich, Tamworth, Littleborough. Owing to ill health he retired from the active ministry in 1938, but after a year’s rest he went to Cardiff as an active supernumerary and served with distinction there for several years. In 1957 he returned to Manchester and lived quietly, and in failing health, in Stretford until his death. 

He was one of many Primitive Methodist ministers who came under the spell of Dr A. S. Peake at college, and the scholarship of this great man had a profound effect upon him. Although more than sixty years had passed he still kept and treasured his college lecture notes. Those who remember his ministry recall his rich powerful voice, and his compelling effectiveness in the pulpit. He was a man of strong convictions and was militant in his championship of the cause of moral righteousness, and delighted in his reputation as a fighter. During recent years ill health had denied him the opportunity to continue to preach the gospel he loved so much and to offer the Saviour he served so faithfully, but his great encouragement was the faithful love and devotion he received from his wife, and her splendid service in the local church and circuit. He died in hospital on 11 March 1966, in the eighty-eighth year of his life and the sixty-second of his ministry.

Family

Henry was born on 16 September 1878 at Manchester, Lancashire, to parents Charles, a railway carryon (1881), and Jane.

He married Emily Evans (b1877) in the spring of 1908 at Manchester, Lancashire.

Henry died on 11 March 1966 at Stretford, Lancashire..

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1904 Holt & Sherringham
• 1906 Clitheroe
• 1908 Bolton I
• 1911 Foxhill Bank
• 1915 Earlstown
• 1921 Newton & Hyde
• 1923 Torquay
• 1926 Stockport II
• 1931 West Bromwich II
• 1934 Tamworth & Lichfield
• 1937 Littleborough
• 1938 Stockport (Sup)

References

Methodist Minutes 1966/208

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers