Pearce, Frank Porteous (1873-1951)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

FRANK PORTEOUS PEARCE: born at Manchester in 1873. He dedicated his life to Christ in early manhood in the Grosvenor Street Wesleyan Chapel, Manchester. The call to the ministry came to him soon after his conversion, and he became an evangelist first in his own home, where he exerted a wonderful influence on his five sisters and brother. After training at Hartley College, where he was affectionately known by his fellow-students as the ‘Converted Fiddler’, he entered upon a long and fruitful ministry in the Primitive Methodist Church.

He devoted his musical ability to the service of the Church, and his lectures on the ‘Story and Romance of the Violin’ always attracted great interest, as did his talks on fishing, which was his recreation. To him the mysteries of nature revealed many secrets of Nature’s God. He lived a busy life, finding everything wonderful in God’s world.

His preaching was always evangelical, and his sermons were marked by wide and thoughtful reading. He was a faithful pastor and discharged his duties with a generous devotion and courtesy. He retired in 1943, and after a short illness passed into the Homeland on the 8th May 1951, at the age of seventy-seven, and in the fifty-first year of his ministry.

Family

Frank was born on 7 July 1873 at Manchester, Lancashire, to parents Frederick Pearce, a warehouseman (1881), and Susan Elizabeth Bartlett. His brother, Mark, was also a PM minister.

The 1891 census return records Frank as an assistant in a factory warehouse.

He married Annie Wemyss (1871-1950) in the spring of 1905 at Manchester, Lancashire. Annie was a Deaconess. Census returns identify two children.

Ida Wemyss (1906-1998) – married Harry Hatton, a cloth merchant’s manager (1939), in 1935
Edna Porteous (1908-1998) – married Walter P Brooks, a parliamentary journalist (1939), in 1933

Frank died on 8 May 1951 at Heaton Norris, Stockport, Lancashire.