Vol 2, pages 1-100 - My Primitive Methodist Ancestors

THE PERIOD OF CIRCUIT PREDOMINANCE AND ENTERPRISE. 69
John By-water is a name that calls for rehabilitation. He has received but scant
recognition and fallen into undeserved neglect. Until the late Dr. Joseph Wood
chivalrously vindicated his name,* little remained to show the kind of man he was, and
how worthy to be remembered by the denomination he served so well. True : there is
the official memoir in the Conference Minutes of 1870, but there is little else ;
and that
memoir is so short that it can be given here in its entirety without making undue
demands on our space. Says the official
penman :
" John Bywater was a native of the town of Leeds, Yorkshire. In his youth he
was converted to God and united with the Primitive Methodists. He commenced
his itinerant ministry at the Conference of 1825, and subsequently laboured in and
superintended some of the most important circuits in the Connexion. For five
years he was General Missionary Secretary. He was superannuated by the Conference
of 1860, and died at Cote Houses in the Scotter Circuit, October 12th, 1869,
aged 65 years."
Between the facts here stated and the shortness of the notice there is a striking disparity.
We need not go into the reasons for this studied brevity and speedy relapse
into silence. The reasons if reasons there were, hold good no longer, and it is time
we saw the man in his true perspective and proportions. If he did through inexperience
and shattered health fail comparatively as a farmer, on his enforced and somewhat early
retirement, he had not failed as a chapel-builder, as an administrator, as a preacher, as
a friend, as a Christian minister. Thus much is due to his name. In Leeds, young
Bywater was true and loyal. During the early troubles which overtook the society, we
are told that John Hopkinson and John Bywater were true comrades and yoke-fellows ;
"they stood firm for Connexional rule, and almost laboured themselves into the grave
to save the cause from wreck ;
and success crowned their efforts."
The allusion here made to the storm-cloud which burst over Leeds Primitive Methodism
in the early days, calls for a little fuller reference before we go on to glance at one or
two other workers.
" Revivalism," as we have defined it, did Primitive Methodism
some good ; it also did it some harm. So Leeds, like other places, found to its cost.
Revivalism helped to found the Leeds Society, and it all but succeeded in shattering
it.
We have, in writing of Hull, referred to the group of preaching and praying women
notably Ann Carr, Miss Williams, and Miss Healand who carried on evangelistic
labours in Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. There is evidence to show
that the Misses Carr and Williams were counted as Primitive Methodists, and not merely
accepted as unattached auxiliaries. At the March, 1820, Quarter Day of the Hull
Circuit, a letter was sent to Miss Carr asking if she were willing to enter the ministry.
Ann Carr was born at Market Rasen in 1738, and died June 18th, 1841. In Leeds
she and her friend Williams laboured hard and formed many friendships. There was
a good deal of the masculine in Ann Carr's composition, and neither she nor her
colleague took very kindly to the yoke imposed by a regularly organised Connexion.
They preferred to hold a roving commission and to take an erratic course, letting fancy
* " Becollections of John Bywater and Early Chapel-building in the town of Hull by J. "Wood, D.D."
Aldersgate Magazine, 1898.