Ogg, Arthur Thomas (1882-1960)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

ARTHUR JAMES OGG: born in Shorncliffe in 1882. He was born at the Garrison and educated at Christ Church and St. Mary’s Schools, Dover. He became a woodworker and was an able craftsman with qualities of precision and detail which remained with him throughout his life. 

He entered the Ministry of the Primitive Methodist Church after being trained at Hartley College. His circuits were widely separate: Halstead and Great Bardfield, Wickhambrook and Newmarket, Barnoldswick, Hoyland, Glastonbury, Quarry Bank, Stafford, Darlaston, and Durham Coast. In both wars he served as an officiating chaplain, and he always had an interest in servicemen and their conditions. 

He had an art of helping and comforting which was engendered by his broad human sympathies, and many people became his friends through their distress. This was very evident at the time of the Easington Colliery Disaster when much of the relief work became his concern and responsibility. 

He retired to Chester-le-Street after an active ministry of forty-three years, but retirement was not the end of service. Until the latter months of his life he attended all circuit meetings, and by his mere presence creating the atmosphere of grace. Colleagues and officials owed much to him. He had both humility and authority. His whole ministry was ordered by his spiritual compulsions, which enhanced his judgement, his preaching, and his affections. Bunyan’s picture of the Christian minister is entirely apposite, for he indeed had his eyes lifted up to heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth written upon his lips, and the world behind his back. 

He died 24 January 1960, in the seventy-eighth year of his age and the forty-ninth of his ministry.

Family

Arthur was born on 6 June 1882 at Shorncliffe Camp, Kent, to parents Thomas, a military staff clerk (1891), and Elizabeth. He was baptised on 2 July at Shorncliffe Camp.

Before entering the ministry Arthur was an apprentice carpenter (1901).

He married Catherine Charlotte Bond (1880-1961) in the summer of 1914 in the Dover Registration District, Kent. Birth records identify three children.

• Margaret E G (b1917) – married Karl Schierl in 1943
• Alexander R (abt1919-1919)
• Katharine Elizabeth (1923-2004) – married Norman H Barker in 1950

Arthur died on 24 January 1960 at the General Hospital, Chester le Street, Co. Durham.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1910 Halstead
• 1914 Wickhambrook
• 1918 Barnoldswick
• 1922 Hoyland
• 1924 Glastonbury
• 1927 Quarry Bank
• 1933 Stafford
• 1941 Darlaston Slater
• 1945 Barnoldswick
• 1948 Durham Coast
• 1952 Chester le Street (S)

References

Methodist Minutes 1960/192

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers

Note: Records identify Arthur’s second name as Thomas, not James