Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference
HENRY STRATTON: born at Skipton in 1885. From his earliest days he was connected with the Methodist church at Gargrave Road, Skipton, and was one of four young men from that Society who, at approximately the same time, entered different branches of the Christian ministry. Prior to entering college, his evangelical fervour was evidenced in the devoted work he did as a teacher in the Sunday-school and the evangelical enterprise upon which he embarked in his own town.
The evangelical concern of those early days never departed from him, and determined the character both of his preaching and his pastoral work to the end of his days. He was trained at Hartley College and entered the ministry in 1910. Subsequently he served in the following circuits: Wolverton, Ludlow, Clun, Bolton, Sandbach, Barrowford, Grimsby, Winsford, Halifax, and Stainland and Greetland. Retiring from the active ministry in 1954, he returned to the Skipton circuit to take pastoral charge of the church at Long Preston, where he greatly endeared himself.
He lived ardently always. Football, which he played as long as that was physically possible to him, gardening, and music were the means whereby he found recreation; but earnestly as these recreations were pursued, they were never exploited at the expense of his ministry to church and people. His characteristic ardour marked his advocacy of the cause of temperance, and he served that cause as District Temperance Secretary and, for four years, as President of the Bolton Temperance Union.
Throughout his ministry he exercised a very gracious influence. An infectious gaiety characterized his personal religion, and he communicated to other people the religious joy which filled his own soul. He possessed great personal charm, and was greatly loved in all the circuits in which he travelled. People loved him for the man and the minister he was, and many fragrant and hallowed memories are cherished amongst the people with whom he laboured.
To the end of his days he lived his life as fully as it was possible for him to do, and then he died in his own home on 20th July 1956, in the seventy-first year of his age and the forty-sixth of his ministry.
Family
Henry was born on 27 February 1885 at Skipton, Yorkshire, to parents Thomas, a farmer of 53 acres (1881), and Ellen.
Before entering the ministry Henry worked as a cotton weaver (1901)
He married Bertha Overend (1883-1968) in the summer of 1914 at Skipton, Yorkshire.
Henry died on 20 July 1956 in the Ewecross Registration District, Yorkshire.
Circuits
- Hartley
- 1910 Wolverton
- 1912 Ludlow
- 1914 Clun
- 1916 Bolton I
- 1923 Sandbach
- 1927 Barrowford
- 1933 Grimsby Haint
- 1938 Winsford Central
- 1942 Halifax Ebenezer
- 1948 Stainland &c
- 1954 Skipton (Sup)
References
Methodist Minutes 1957/185
W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990
Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers
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