Southwood, Samuel Joseph (1837-1901)

Primitive Methodist Magazine 1896

Early years

Samuel was born on 10 August 1837 at London to parents Samuel and Harriet. Samuel was baptised on 14 October 1837 at Commercial Rd Independent Chapel, London. Samuel senior was an accountant.

From the age of 15, Samuel took an active and prominent part in the work of temperance. In association with several other youths, he formed a Temperance Society in a back street in East London.

Samuel entered into business as a clothier’s shopman in Gravesend. There he became engaged in various kinds of Christian work; teaching in the ragged-school, preaching in tramp’s lodging houses and visiting the sick and poor.

Ministry

Samuel’s obituary records that he was an unassuming, plodding, unselfish worker, possessing a keen sense of justice, duty, truth and righteousness, a forcible and convincing preacher and teacher, who knew how to present great and important truths in simple, suitable, encouraging, inspiring and unmistakable utterances.

Samuel was an active ‘Good Templar’. In 1888 he was elected Grand Chaplain of England.

Literature.

Samuel wrote the ‘Biographical Temperance Dictionary’, published over ten years in volumes of the Temperance Worker.

Family

Samuel married Ann Paul (1832-1902) in late 1865 at Gravesend, Kent. Census returns identify five children.

  • Harriet Mary (1866-1946) – married Arthur Wheatley, a colliery weigh clerk
  • Samuel James (1868-1949) – a clerk
  • Annie Jane (1869-1936) – a dressmaker; married William Deacon Haddon, a coal merchants clerk
  • Alice Lilian (1872-1942) – a dressmaker
  • Mary Evelyn (b1875) – a maternity and sick nurse (1911); emigrated to Canada in 1911

Samuel died on 8 October 1901 at Radstock, Somerset.

Circuits

  • 1861 Exmouth
  • 1862 Maidstone
  • 1863 Chelmsford
  • 1864 Hammersmith
  • 1865 Morden
  • 1866 Bath
  • 1867 Penzance
  • 1869 Redstock
  • 1870 Redruth
  • 1871 St Ives
  • 1874 Swansea
  • 1878 St Austell
  • 1880 Monmouth
  • 1883 Dunstable
  • 1886 Woburn Sands
  • 1888 Canterbury
  • 1890 Grays & Romford
  • 1892 Hungerford
  • 1896 Malmesbury
  • 1900 Bath

References

Primitive Methodist Magazine 1896/803

PM Minutes 1902/28

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers

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