Folley, William Henry M.M. (1892-1961)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

WILLIAM HENRY FOLLEY M.M.: born at Maidenhead in 1892. After apprenticeship to the printing trade, he was at Hartley College when the first world war broke out and, with others, joined the R.A.M.C. While serving with an ambulance unit in France, he was awarded the Military Medal for ‘distinguished conduct in the field’. 

As a sportsman who held several cups and medals for cross-country running and for football, he was a man amongst men and maintained his contact through Toc H and the British Legion wherever he went. After college and a probationary year at Penge, he travelled in the East London Mission, Luton, Sheffield, Quarry Bank, Leicester, Hitchin and Faversham before moving to Nantwich in 1956. 

His great capacity for making friends was allied to a keen sense of humour which made him welcome in any company. A true pastor, a forceful preacher, a tireless worker, he gave himself unstintingly to the Church he loved and the people in his care. Both inside and outside Methodism he was known and respected. Though equally at home with the children and the aged, he had a special concern for young people, desiring nothing more than to show them the splendour of the Christian life. The strain of responsibility and self-giving, however, told seriously upon him, and he died suddenly on 6 April 1961, in the sixty-ninth year of his age and the forty-fourth of his ministry.

Family

William was born on 4 December 1892 at Maidenhead, Berkshire, to parents William, general repairs and house decorator (1911), and Jane.

The 1911 census return describes William as a printer’s apprentice.

He married Eva Beatrice Douglas (1892-1968) in the summer of 1921 at Maidenhead, Berkshire. Birth records identify two children.

• Douglas Walter Fletcher (1923-1993) – a lecturer (1961)
• Anne G (b1929)

William died on 6 April 1961 at Nantwich, Cheshire.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1917 Supply
• 1920 Penge
• 1921 London E
• 1926 Luton I
• 1928 Sheffield C.M.
• 1933 Quarry Bank
• 1938 Leicester Hinckley
• 1945 Hitchin
• 1956 Nantwich Hospital St

References

Methodist Minutes 1961/224

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers