Vercoe, Charles Richard (1882-1938)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

CHARLES R. VERCOE: a native of Torquay, born in 1882. He entered Hartley College in 1906 and commenced the work of the Ministry at Clitheroe in 1908. For a period of thirty years he gave himself to the work he loved. 

His ideal as a minister was to be a preacher, a pastor, and an administrator. To this ideal he gave himself entirely and in so doing burned out his life for Christ. His eager spirit could not relax. It seemed rather to say, “I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work.” Shadowed by the knowledge of possible collapse, he toiled on through the years, ever genial and sympathetic, and buoyed up by the assurance that his life was hid with Christ in God. So he packed a life’s work into those thirty short years and kept to his tasks up to the last. 

The end came swiftly on May 30, 1938, without fear or pain, and he entered into “the heart’s true home,” where “His servants serve Him and see Him face to face.”

Family

Charles was born in 1882 at Torquay, Devon, to parents John G Vercoe, a draper’s manager (1891), and Eleanor Underhill.

Before entering the ministry Charles was a draper’s apprentice (1901).

He married Nora May Coaker (1887-1963) in the summer of 1912 at Dartmouth, Devon. Birth records identify two children.

• Eunice M (b1913) – married Frank A Williams in 1940
• Charles Eric (1918-1983) – a tester of electrical and signalling systems (1939)

Charles died on 30 May 1938 at Coventry, Warwickshire.

Nora married George C. Prinn in 1940.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1908 Clitheroe
• 1910 Tooting
• 1911 Teignmouth
• 1912 Cradley Heath
• 1915 Crewe II
• 1918 Lymm & Altrincham
• 1920 Hasbury
• 1924 Kidderminster
• 1929 Dawley
• 1930 Skipton
• 1935 Coventry

References

Methodist Minutes 1938/201

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers