OLIVER(S)
,
THOMAS
(
1725
-
1799
),
Wesleyan preacher
;
b. at
Tregynon, Mont.
, in
1725
(christened
8 Sept.
). 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
d. (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
, q.v.
) described as his only
Welsh-speaking preacher
.
Oliver
was the intermediary employed by
Wesley
to persuade
Owen
Davies
(
1752
-
1830
) (q.v.)
to become an
itinerant preacher
.
Bibliography:
-
Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography
(by
J. E. Lloyd
);
-
R. Williams
,
Montgomeryshire Worthies
, second ed.,
1894
(fuller);
-
A. H. Williams
,
Welsh Wesleyan Methodism, 1800-1858 its
origins, growth and secessions
, 1935
, 58, 86.
Author:
Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, C.B.E., D.Litt., Ll.D.,
F.S.A., (1881-1969), Bangor
