My 'Primitive' Ancestor - Part 1

Welcome to my new blog the main purpose of which is to compliment the ongoing family history research which is a fun hobby of mine. There are links below and in my blog profile to the main Family Tree website (R.A.F.A.W.) that I run for all the extended families linked to my own and forming the scope of research.

 

From the post title, you might be forgiven for thinking this was about pre-historic man, apes or some such topic. No -  I thought I would begin with an introduction to my great great great grandfather (sometimes referred to as 3 x great grandfather), the Reverend Thomas Holliday, a 19th century, Primitive Methodist Preacher.

Some months ago my interest in our Holliday ancestors was piqued when I was introduced to a fellow researcher on Ancestry, another descendant of Reverend Thomas Holliday who had carried out meticulous research about him, and his various family lines. As depicted here in 1836, he was 39 years old.

His page on the aforementioned RAFAW website (Roebuck And Families Ancestry Website) can be found at http://goo.gl/tGh4Fs

It turned out, that Thomas was my 3 x great grandfather, his granddaughter was our Ellen Holliday. (see http://goo.gl/SRlTxG )

To bring us up to present day, Ellen Holliday and Obadiah Roebuck married and are my great grandparents on my dad’s side of the family. (see http://goo.gl/RCFrMl )

It wasn’t just the discovery of a new, more distant relative, it was also the attendant history surrounding Reverend Thomas Holliday that intrigues me. It appears that he was a key activist in the set up of the 19th century Primitive Methodist Connexion, building on the Wesleyan Methodists established by John Wesley and his brother Charles the previous century.

I am not a religious person myself and I suspect the good Reverends’ Wesley and Holliday would be disappointed with me. However, their work was key to the lives and welfare of so many and I do have a fascination with the religious beliefs of my family ancestry. So I thought I would do some research to better understand their story and I’m sharing it with you, in illustrated timeline fashion, over the course of several postings to this family album.

In upcoming posts I will touch on some aspects of the social history encountered in the family line between Thomas Holliday and my own wider family today.

Subsequent posts will appear as and when time permits and any comments, queries, corrections, additions and contributions will of course be very welcome. The next post will begin with the Wesley brothers back in the 18th century – essential history, if only summarised, to understand what followed for my ancestor Thomas.