Pearson, Alfred Rhodes (1836-1890)

Rev. Alfred Rhodes Pearson was born on 28 April 1836 at Lockwood, Huddersfield. At the age of six he moved with his family to Liverpool, where he received his early education under a Wesleyan local preacher. In 1848 the family relocated to Stalybridge, where he completed his schooling and became associated with Bennett Street Sunday School.

He experienced religious conversion in 1851 under the ministry of Rev. B. Turnock and began preaching as a local preacher within a year, while working long hours as a factory operative. After a brief period in business on his own account, he entered ministerial preparation under Dr Cooke in 1859.

He entered the Methodist New Connexion ministry in 1860 and served in a number of important circuits including Stockport, Macclesfield, York, Bradford, Halifax and Batley. He later held significant connexional responsibilities and was elected President of the Conference in 1889.

He married Anne Shaw in 1866. She died in 1883 after prolonged illness, an event that affected him deeply. Rev. Pearson died on 30 July 1890 at Clifton House, Longton, following heart disease. He was widely respected for his administrative ability, financial acumen and devoted service to the Connexion

Family

Alfred Pearson married Anne Shaw on September 19, 1866, They had a daughter who died soon after her mother and two surviving children:

Mary Ann G. Pearson (1868-)

John Alfred Shaw Pearson (1870-1950)

Circuits

• • 1860   Stockport
  • 1861     Dudley
  • 1862    Birmingham
  • 1863    Hartlepool
  • 1864    Manchester South   (in Full Connexion)
  • 1866    Macclesfield
  • 1868    York
  • 1871     Bradford
  • 1876    Halifax South
  • 1881    Batley
  • 1885   Longton
  • 1889   Longton (Supernumerary)
• He was President in 1889, Chapel Secretary 1889-1890, Convenor of a District Meeting 1888-89, District Financial Secretary 1875-1880

Source: 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

Obituaries

The official obituary appears on page 6 of The Minutes of the Methodist New Connexion Conference for 1891.

His life was memorialised in The Methodist New Connexion Magazine for 1890

DEATH OF THE EX-PRESIDENT, REV. A. R. PEARSON. NOTES OF HIS EARLY LIFE.—THE PRESIDENT’S FUNERALADDRESS.

THE Connexion will have heard with profound sorrow of the sudden and unexpected death of our beloved and honoured ex-President, Rev. Alfred Rhodes Pearson.
The sorrow will be all the deeper because it was such a shock to the hopes we had formed that the termination of his toilsome Presidential duties and the year’s rest that was before him would result in the full recovery of his health and leave him in the zenith of his powers for many years of gifted and valued service to the Connexion he loved so well. But, alas! for human hopes and plans he is gone—gone all too soon for us, though not too soon forthe wiser plans of the ever-ruling tender Taskmaster, who knew howsorely the tired worker needed heavenly rest—the rest of changed and nobler service:—

“Where every power finds sweet employ In that eternal world of joy.”

Our purpose in writing now is simply to state a few facts of present interest to those of our readers who are anxiously making inquiry concerning this sad and painful bereavement and give some account of the impressive funeral solemnity conducted by the President in honour of our brother’s memory. We may do this without trenching on the task of those who may in this Magazine and before the Conference present a more complete analysis of his character and a more worthy tribute to his life and work.
Fortunately we have before us some notes of his life which were penned by himself at a time when he was little expecting so early a summons to his rest. These notes enable us to correct the error stated in several newspapers that he was a native of Stalybridge. He was born at Lockwood, Huddersfield, April 28, 1836; removed when six years of age to Liverpool and received his first education under Mr. Davies, a Wesleyan local preacher. In 1848 circumstances again necessitated the removal of his parents; this time to Stalybridge, where he finished his early education. Others may tell how he became a scholar in Bennett Street Sunday School and under the good influences there, was led to join the Church. Our honoured father, the Rev. B. Turnock, will be cheered to learn that deep religious impressions were made upon Mr. Pearson’s mind by a sermon preached in 1851, when Mr. Turnock was stationed in the Ashton Circuit. Constrained by the love of Christ, he began to preach within twelve months of his conversion, when in his seventeenth year. His fine mellow voice and fluent, easy style of address would make a favourable impression in the Ashton,Stalybridge and other circuits, where he exercised his gifts as a local preacher. He tells us that, though he had to work very long hours as a factory operative, yet he spent his leisure in earnest reading and study to qualify himself for preaching the Gospel.

We may note here an incident of unique interest illustrative of one feature of his character. With that strong business instinct and love of finance which always distinguished him, in 1857, young as he was, he began business on his own account with a fair prospect of success. Buta stronger passion seized him—the passion to give his whole life to the nobler work of the ministry; and in 1859 he was placed under the care and tuition of our ever-to-be-revered Dr. Cooke.

The story of his ministerial life, which began at Stockton in 1860 and the record of his Connexional service and honours, we leave to other and abler pens. But we have thought it desirable to state the above vouched for facts of his early life, inasmuch as they are little known and have been already wrongly conceived.

It is well known that after twenty-nine years of devoted service in several of our large and important circuits he was constrained by medical advice to ask, in 1889, for a year’s rest from Circuit work; and that he was crowned the same year at Dudley Conference with the Connexional Presidency as a recognition of his manifold gifts and an earnest of further distinction in store for him. But his Presidential toils, combined with his labours on the Union Committee and the straining of his enfeebled energies in connection with the Chapel and Loan Funds, were too much for his already broken health; and he came to the recent Conference physically unfit for its exacting duties in Committees and on its busy platform. We understand that his doctor warned him of the peril to his life if he went. But much of its important business was in his hands and all but dependent on his presence; and in the spirit of a noble self-devotion, he bravely went and risked all. Some may be disposed to question the wisdom of his going, but even they must honour the self-sacrifice and love of his work thus manifested. Be it said of him in commendation, “He never shirked duty even to the last.” Worn and wearied he oft looked whilst on the platform; and the changing purple flush of his face told of incessant heart-peril and pain; but he never once faltered in spirit and never once lost that fine courtesy and suavity of manner and tone which were so full of respectful reverence to his fathers in the ministry and so genial and attractive to his younger brethren. Perhaps there could not be said of all the Presidents and platform officers of Methodism at large what has been said of him that he was just as genial and brotherly and accessible in the majesty and insignia of office as he incomparably was before he graced them. Amid relief and quiet since Conference he was, we believe, sanguine of recovery during a year’s promise of rest. But vital energies were too far gone; and with more of apparent suddenness to his friends than to his medical man, who knew more than they, he passed into the presence of his Lord shortly after seven on Wednesday evening, July 30th. He died at his residence, Clifton House, Longton, of what is known as heart disease under the various names of angina pectoris and syncope.

His funeral took place at the Cemetery, Micklehurst, Mossley, on Saturday afternoon, August 2nd. The esteem in which he was held in the Connexion was manifest by the large number of ministers and prominent laymen who, at short notice, came from circuits near and distant to pay their tribute of love and mournful regret. We made no notes at the time, but so far as we can remember there were present:—The President (Rev. James Le Huray), Revs. A. McCurdy, T. Rider, J. Medicraft, T. D. Crothers, J. K. Jackson, D. Round, T. T. Rushworth, James Ogden,J. C. Milburn, W. Longbottom, H. T. Marshall, G. Packer, S. Walker,D. Jackson, H. Smith, E. Holyoake, B. S. Chambers, J. Candelet, W.Eddon, Jesse Shaw, J. Gibson, S. T. Nicholson, W. Matthews, G.Wheatley, A. Hilditch, W. D. Grunstone, J. L. Fox, W. Usher, G. S.Hornby, G. W. Crutchley; and Messrs. Ald. G. Ridgway, J.P. (Hanley), Ald. A. Edwards, J.P., J. B. Shelley, T. Allin (Longton), Ald. A.Ramsden, J.P. (Halifax), J. Preston, J. H. Senior, B. Parker (Batley), Geo.Hirst (Dewsbury), J. Toulson (Oldham), A. H. Lawton (Lees), Chas. Shaw,E. Tiffany (Leeds), J. Shaw and many others, in addition to the family and other kindred of our departed brother. The Mission Secretary and some others were away from home or could not come and go back in time for unavoidable Sabbath duties the next day.

After the Revs. T. Rider and J. Medicraft had read suitable portions of Scripture; and the Rev. A. McCurdy had drawn all our hearts with him in deeply touching and solemn prayer, the President gave an address of singular felicity and tender impressiveness, during which he said:
“We meet to-day under the shadow of a great sorrow. Connexionally we have lost one of our most able and devoted officers and personally some of us have lost a friend endeared by long and loving intercourse; a friend, oft tried and trusted, who never betrayed our confidence or disappointed our hope and whose memory will linger with us in the future like sunlight on the hills—linger in our hearts fresh and fragrant as the flowers which loving hands have piled upon his coffin.

“It is not our intention to speak at length of our departed friend. Nor in the few words we try to say is it our purpose to eulogize the dead. This is neither the time nor place for eulogy. Indeed, had we the will we lack the power. Our tongue falters not from want of words, but through excess of feeling. Our heart would find utterance not in speech, but in tears more eloquent than words. Still, whilst to us such silence would be golden, the most precious and congenial offering of our affection, it might be misconstrued into a failure of duty and an evidence of unworthiness of the friendship which death has so rudely interrupted.

“Our Church has, doubtless, had sons more distinguished than the one who has been taken from us, but none more devoted than he; less brilliant than some, he was more practical than most; if he could not carry an audience by a torrent of eloquence, he could conquer it by the logic of hard and irresistible facts. With a marvellous aptitude for mastering and marshalling details, he was almost irresistible in debate. His mind seemed to be a Connexional storehouse crammed with facts and figures so pigeon-holed and accessible that he could at any moment lay his finger on the item he needed. No ordinary antagonist could successfully enter the arena of debate against him and even the ablest in so doing risked a fall. In this respect he stood head and shoulders above most of his brethren; and this gift was fully and cheerfully consecrated to the Church he so lovingly and loyally served. Days and nights were ungrudgingly devoted to dry, uninteresting details, from which most men would have shrunk dismayed and with dislike. It is meet that to-day we should gratefully recognize his almost unique labours in this respect.

“Still, not merely nor mostly for his services in this department would we hold him in remembrance. Doing more than most of us in these matters he did not leave other and more spiritual duties undone. Called to labour in some of our most important circuits, his ministry was generally welcomed and frequently blessed.Friends not a few in his various spheres of labour cherish pleasant reminiscences of association in Christian service and mourn to-day his loss with a grief second only to that which has darkened so suddenly the home to which he was as the sunshine.

“All too soon for them and us has death removed him. Till recently he had bid fair
for long as well as useful life. But, as we now know, even when most vigorous he was the prey of a disease which, though secretly, was surely doing its work. The hidden mischief was developed and the end hastened by a crushing affliction, which broke his heart and blighted his life a few years ago. A beloved wife, one of the truest help meets with which God ever blessed a man, idolized in her home and honoured for her works’ sake in the Church, was smitten down, after years of hopeless, bravely-borne agony, in the very heyday of her life. Scarcely had the grave closed over her when it was re-opened to receive another of his household—a bright and lovely child, whose sweet attractiveness had bound her as with golden cords to her father’s heart. Like a bolt out of the blue fell this stroke which severed father from child. Wounds werethen opened which never closed again. From that crushing blow our friend never recovered. We do not doubt that the shock helped on the work of the insidious foe which had already laid siege to his life. And now, after years of suffering, which, whilst shortening life, has rapidly matured and mellowed character, the end has come —come, too, in the midst of service; for death found the soldier at his post.

“A few days ago when visiting him we found him not yielding to weakness, stretched on his bed waiting for the inevitable end, but propped up and busy, correcting proofsheets, which some of us will look upon with mournful interest as the last work of his pen ere it dropped for ever from his hand. And now the weary labourer’s task is o’er. The tired eyelids have dropped on the tired eyes and they are sealed in the last long sleep which shall know no waking until the Archangel’s trump shall sound. And now and here ‘in the house appointed for all the living,’ with a reverent love which forgets faults and thinks only of excellences, we come to lay all that death has left us of our beloved, in its last resting-place. We do so cherishing sweet memories of the past and joyful anticipations of the future. We do so with the desire that we may follow him as far as he followed Christ and breathing the heart-felt prayer that the God who supported and solaced him in life’s last hour may comfort and counsel his children with more than a father’s care until the family now severed shall be re-united in the eternal home of many mansions. Here on the threshold of the tomb our faltering lips whisper, not the words of a last and long farewell, but an au revoir which looks upon death not as the end of all, but simply a momentary shadow through which we shall by and by pass into a brighter and better world—which welcomes the grave as Heaven’s treasure-house, in which the hallowed dust will be preserved until the resurrection morn; and which looks and longs for the re-union beyond the skies where ‘the eternal day shall dawn and the night shadows of earth shall flee away.’ Till then and only till then, we say ‘Farewell!’ ”

Shortly after, amid drenching showers, broken with gleams of sunshine, which seemed to typify our mingled sorrow and hope, the body was laid in the vault where, beneath a beautiful memorial stone, the remains of his late wife and child are buried.

The Staffordshire Sentinel of the same week observed:—

“The rev. gentleman was an able preacher and a fine administrator, having splendid business aptitudes. Personally he was a most genial and brotherly man and will be greatly regretted by all who knew him. While Mr. Pearson’s career in the Church to which he belonged was fairly prosperous as a whole and was finally crowned with the Presidency just a year ago, he had his share of the ordinary ills that flesh is heir to. But his genial Christian spirit not only won for him many friends, but also assisted him immensely during his greatest sorrows. It cannot be doubted, however, that some of the things that fell to his lot told seriously upon his health. At the Conference of 1889, when he reached the summit of a Methodist preacher’s ambition, the presidential chair, he obtained leave to rest from circuit work for the year. During his term of office he confined his labours to the duties of the presidency and work pertaining to other departments of service with which he was officially connected. He was still unable to resume circuit work when his year of office expired. The rev. gentleman leaves one son and one daughter to mourn his loss and we are sure that a wide circle of personal friends in the immediate neighbourhood of the Potteries, as well as throughout the Methodist New Connexion, will accord to Mr. and Miss Pearson their warmest sympathy.” NEWMETH.TRUST.
Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be,
The last of life for which the first was made.
Our times are in His hand
Who said, “A whole I planned.”
Youth shows but half; trust God, see all, be not afraid. ROBERT BROWNING.