ROBERTS, THOMAS (1835 - 1899), Calvinistic Methodist minister

Born at the Green, near Denbigh, 19 August 1835, son of John and Jane Powel Roberts. For a short time he attended the school kept by Jonah Lloyd, an Independent preacher; after which he went for a year as a farmer's boy to his uncle at Tŷ-draw, near Mold. After that, he went to the British School at Denbigh where Macaulay, the schoolmaster, was kind to him. He served his apprenticeship in the office of Thomas Gee, where he remained from 1850 to 1859, first as a compositor and then as one of Gee's assistant editors, and where he wrote extensively for the Faner Fach.

In January 1859 the Calvinistic Methodists' monthly meeting, held at Llanelidan, arranged for him to start preaching, and he went to Bala C.M. College, where he spent the next five years, leaving in April 1864. His first church was at Colwyn, where he remained for two and a half years. In January 1867 he was put in charge of the churches of Jerusalem (Bethesda) and Ty'n-y-maes, and was ordained in June the same year.

In 1870 he married Winifred, the daughter of the Rev. Rees Jones of Port Dinorwic; they had one son, Arthur Rhys, solicitor, who died young.

He was moderator of the North Wales Assembly in 1893, and secretary of the North Wales Home Mission, 1889-99, his annual report being published as an appendix to the Drysorfa. He was an excellent writer, a powerful preacher, and a keen student of the works of Morgan Llwyd.

He died at Bangor, 24 November 1899.

Author

• Reverend Dr John Owen, (1864 - 1953)

Sources

• Trysorfa y Plant, July 1898
• Y Drysorfa, 1900, 147, 255
• Owen Evans, Dinbych - yn ei Hynafiaeth a'i Henwogion (Denbigh 1907)

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q20821450

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-RUU/1.0/