Griffiths, John Bynner (1865-1932)

The Reverend John B. Griffiths was born on 1st January 1865 at Penybontfawr in Montgomeryshire. He entered the Congregationalist ministry  in 1891 serving as minister at Adwy in Denbighshire. In June 1894 he transferred to the United Methodist Free Churches.

He was stationed at Bramley for six months in 1894 before sailing out to East Africa, where he spent the rest of his life and ministry.

He worked with R.M. Ormerod  in the Golbanti Circuit from 1894 to 1897, then in Mazeras from 1897 to 1929, when he supernnuated (retired). He remained in Mazeras until his death on 23rd November 1932.

When the British sphere of influence in East Africa was extended inland John B. Griffiths petitioned the colonial government to grant the Meru district as the exclusive sphere of the United Methodist church. In December 1909 the government agreed.

His obituary in The Minutes of the Methodist Conference 1933 reads:

J.B. Griffiths – born on January 1, 1865, at Penybontfawr, Montgomeryshire. As a worker in the fields he took his share in the maintenance of the home when but a few years old. Studying in his spare time and amid his toil, unable to speak anything but Welsh until he was 15 years of age, by sheer dogged persistence he won through. As a youth he worked in a quarry, and saved enough money to devote two years to preparation for the entrance examination to the Calvinistic Independent College, Bangor. In his 4 years’ course he passed Inter. B.A. and studied theology. For 2 years he served as minister of the Adwy Clawd Congregational Church. Accepted for the East Africa Mission of the United Methodist Free Church, he was stationed at Golbanti, where for months he suffered from malaria every second week. Eventually he was sent down to Mombasa in such a condition that his life was despaired of. Only half-conscious he kept repeating: “I won’t be sent home, I’m going to live for Africa.” He did! For 36 years in the least healthy of our stations, with unfaltering devotion and silent heroism for which no tribute can ever be adequate, he sustained the burden of the East Africa Mission through every vicissitude. For the varied demands which work overseas makes upon a man he was supremely equipped. The buildings erected at Mazeras and Ribe, designed by himself and erected under his supervision, are a standing memorial to his practical gifts. In administration he exercised a paternal discipline, possessing that rare qualification for dealing with a primitive people – the authority of love. Unselfish to a degree, he pioneered the development of the Mission to the cool healthy highlands, himself remaining in the malarial coast region. He had great personal charm, a profound religious experience; and was almost painfully sensitive, incurably reticent, exquisitely shy. Retiring from active service in 1930, he passed his last days with the people whom he had loved with such devotion and served so richly till, on November 23, 1932, he entered into rest.

Family

John B Griffiths married first, in Mombasa on 25 March 1897, Margaret E. Edwards (1866-1899). She sadly died in childbirth in 1899.

He married again on 12 May 1905 Alice Jane Maddley, and they had two sons.