Slater, John Herbert (1887-1962)

Transcription of Obituary in Minutes of Methodist Conference

Born at Bolehill, Derbyshire, in 1887. After a year at Cliff College he was trained for the Primitive Methodist Ministry at Hartley College.

After service at Walthamstow, Wolverton and Harrogate, he began a six year term in Nigeria. This included medical work (for which he had been trained at the Homoeopathic Training Hospital, London) and pioneering endeavour that was carried out with such devoted and painstaking care that a thriving Christian community grew from the firm foundations that he laid.

On return from the work overseas he served at Nelson (Glam.), Hadnall, Letchworth, Chippenham, Derby, Biggleswade, Woodley and Bedford, superannuating in 1953.

From 1955 he lived at Clive, in the Wem Circuit, where he continued to exercise a gracious and effective preaching and pastoral ministry until two or three months before his death.

His erect carriage befitted the uprightness of his character. All his work was carried out with infinite care and precision.

Disciplined and meticulous in his own life and habits, his ministry was a monument of methodical labour. He was gifted with a rich voice which, with a well-stored mind, made him a preacher and elocutionist of merit. The spiritual quality of his life and the wide-ranging concern of his prayers ministered to many both within and without the Church.

He was a man of many interests, which included music, printing and photography, and all these pursuits were used in the service of others and to the glory of God. Nothing was held back of the large gifts of mind and character that Herbert Slater brought to a ministry of distinction.

He died on 14 January 1962, in the seventy-fifth year of his life and the forty-ninth of his ministry.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1962

Family

John was born on 4 May 1887 at Bolehill, Derbyshire, to parents John Samuel Slater, a manager of grocery stores (1901), and Louisa.

At the time of the 1901 census John was working in a hosiery warehouse.

He married Ethel Amelia Platts (1882-1954) in the spring of 1917 at Oldham, Lancashire. Birth records identify one child.

  • John Samuel (1918-2000)

John married Edith Mary Dytor in the spring of 1955 in the Whitchurch Registration District, Shropshire.

John died on 14 January 1962 at Havadunas Clive, Shropshire.

Circuits

  • Hartley
  • 1913 Walthamstow
  • 1915 Wolverton
  • 1917 Harrogate
  • 1919 Nigeria
  • 1925 Nelson &c
  • 1926 Hadnall
  • 1929 Herts & Beds Mission
  • 1933 Chippenham
  • 1937 Derby Derwent
  • 1941 Biggleswade
  • 1946 Woodley
  • 1949 Bedford Hass
  • 1951 Bedford N
  • 1953 Wem (Sup)

References

Methodist Minutes 1962/203

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers

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