OLIVER(S), THOMAS (1725 - 1799), Wesleyan preacher
Date of birth: 1725
Date of death: 1799
Gender: Male
Occupation: Wesleyan preacher
Area of activity: Religion
Author: Robert Thomas Jenkins
Born at Tregynon, Montgomeryshire, in 1725 (christened 8 September). He was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and became a travelling craftsman. He was converted by Whitefield, at Bristol, but joined the Wesleyans. In 1753, John Wesley appointed him to itinerate, and he did so for twenty-two years. In 1775 Wesley appointed Oliver superintendent of his printing in London, but had to remove him from office in 1789 for inefficiency. Yet the friendship between the two continued unabated, and when Oliver died in London, in March 1799, he was buried in Wesley's grave. Oliver wrote much, in prose and in verse, but is remembered today only for his hymn ' The God of Abram praise.' He was wont to visit Wales, and is probably the man whom Wesley, momentarily forgetting Harri Llwyd, described as his only Welsh-speaking preacher. Oliver was the intermediary employed by Wesley to persuade Owen Davies (1752 - 1830) to become an itinerant preacher.
Author
- Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)
- J. E. Lloyd, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- R. Williams, Montgomeryshire Worthies (1894) (fuller)
- A. H. Williams, Welsh Wesleyan Methodism, 1800-1858 its origins, growth and secessions (1935), 58, 86
Sources
- Wikipedia Article: Thomas Olivers
Further Reading
Published date: 1959
Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/
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