Davies, Frederick (1897-1958)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

FREDERICK DAVIES: born at Netherton (Dudley) in 1897. After serving in the first World War, he offered for the Primitive Methodist Ministry. He spent a year in circuit work before going to Hartley College for a period of training. Thereafter he was sent to Shettleston (Glasgow), where in 1926 he was ordained, Amble, Leeds, Cheadle, Littleborough, Shrewsbury, Congleton, Buckley, and finally Hetton-le-Hole. 

During his ministry he gave effective service as secretary of local Free Church Councils and valiant support to the Temperance cause, but his main work was in the ordinary duties of a Methodist minister. Here he did a good work, being faithful to his high calling and quietly doing his duty day by day. He helped his people in their homes, and was interested in young people, and had the joy of seeing many of them brought into the fellowship of the Church. Methodical and tidy in his personal habits, he was a good administrator of Methodist rule and practice. In his reading he kept abreast of developments in Biblical and Theological scholarship, and so his preaching and exposition of the Word was enriched to the benefit of his hearers. 

Nor was the range of his interests limited. He was a keen observer of current affairs on a local and national scale and in the world at large. He showed a keen interest in cricket and football. All this, along with his retentive memory and wide reading, made him knowledgable and interesting on many subjects. Evangelical in experience and outlook, he lived the life he preached. To know him in the home was to know that he was the same man off duty as on. The essential goodness of the man was revealed in conversations at the fireside and in family worship at the table. He sought to live near the Saviour whom he so faithfully served.

On 6th May 1958 he received his home call in the thirty-sixth year of his ministry and the sixty-first of his age.

Family

Frederick was born on 24 August 1897 at Netherton, Worcestershire, to parents Thomas, a pike man in coal mine (1901), and Sophia.

He married Sarah Jardine (b1896).

Frederick died on 6 May 1958 at the Royal Infirmary, Sunderland, Co. Durham.

Circuits

• 1920 Wangford
• 1921 Hartley
• 1923 Glasgow II
• 1926 Amble
• 1929 Morley
• 1934 Cheadle
• 1938 Littleborough
• 1941 Shrewsbury
• 1947 Congleton KInsay
• 1952 Buckley & Mold
• 1956 Hetton

References

Methodist Minutes 1958/194

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers