Micklethwaite, William (1834-1917)

William Micklethwaite began his working life as a woolsorter and became a Local Preacher in the Wesleyan Reform Society. According to Beckerlegge he was Leeds Town Missioner from 1854 to 1863, but he told the Census enumerator in 1861 that he was ‘a woll sorter and Local Methodist preacher.  He entered the ministry from Leeds Lady Lane. He spent seven years in Freetown, West Africa and made such an impression that he was invited back for a further term, this time as Superintendent, in 1877. After that second term he had a long ministry across the English circuits.

Family

William was born in Flanshaw, Wakefield on 15th April 1834, to William Micklethwaite and his wife Mary.

He married Ann Sykes (1834- ) on 9th July, 1860 in Wakefield. She also told the Census enumerator that she was a Methodist preacher. They had two children

• Mary Eliza  (1864-1955)
• William Sykes (1873-1962)  A United Methodist minister and missionary

I have as yet been unable to discover when Ann died. She went back out to Freetown with William in 1877, but was no longer alive in April 1881.

William remarried during the first quarter of 1883 in Ormskirk, to Catherine Oldham (1830-1903).

For much of his retirement he lived with his son.

William  died, a double widower, on 5th September 1917 in Preston, Lancashire. There was an obituary in the Minutes of the United Methodist Conference in 1918 (p47).

Circuits

• 1866  Heywood
• 1867  Freetown, Sierra Leone (received into Full Connexion 1873)
• 1874  Ripley
• 1876  Riddings
• 1877  Freetown, Sierra Leone
• 1879  Spennymoor
• 1880  St, George’s Wellington
• 1882  Burton on Trent
• 1887  Farsley and Yeadon
• 1890  Riddings
• 1893  Burnley
• 1898  St,.Austell
• 1901  Tamworth
• 1906  Radstock (Supernumerary)
• 1908 Manchester IV/ Eccles New Road and Patricroft (Supernumerary)
• 1910  Chorley (Supernumerary)
• 1915  Ramsbottom (Supernumerary)
• 1917  Preston Orchard (Supernumerary)

References

Oliver A Beckerlegge, United Methodist ministers and their circuits: Being an arrangement in alphabetical order of the stations of ministers of the Methodist New … and the United Methodist Church, 1797-1932

Missionary Echo of the United Methodist Church 1906 p 65

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers