Edward Clements
Primitive Methodist Magazine 1918
Primitive Methodist Magazine 1912
1864-1946
By Geoff Dickinson
Early years
Edward was born in 1864 at Barnsbury, Middlesex. He lost both his parents when quite young. He associated with the PM Sunday School at Durham Road in the Holloway circuit. He was converted there at the age of sixteen and immediately became a Sunday School teacher and joined the Mission Band. At seventeen, Edward was given his Note for the plan and at eighteen became a Society Class Leader.
Before entering the ministry, Edward went as a hired local preacher to Kentish Town.
Ministry
Edward was a conscientious and steady worker. He had more than usual success in reducing debts and built several chapels, most notably at West Ealing where he had ‘inherited’ a dilapidated iron building.
As a preacher he gave unmistakable evidence of wide reading and careful thinking, especially in the realms of theology and philosophy. His well considered, practical and evangelical message, given with such transparent truthfulness, and pleasant and easy fluency of speech, never failed to both build up believers and win men from darkness to light.
In retirement Edward served as Religious Instructor to the Public Assistance Institution.
Family
Edward married Elizabeth Lydia Atkins (1868-1911) in the spring of 1892 at Islington, London. Census returns identify five children.
- George Edwin Atkin (b1893)
- Helen Doreen (1895-1981) – married George T Hodgson, a PM Minister, in 1925 at Swindon
- Sarah Kathleen (b1896)
- Elizabeth Eileen (b1904)
- William Kenneth Watson (b1909)
Edward married Mary Elizabeth Hyde in the summer of 1930 at Swindon, Wiltshire.
Edward died on 12 December 1946 at Wednesfield, Staffordshire.
Circuits
- 1889 Braintree
- 1892 Belfast
- 1894 Gloucester
- 1897 Ealing
- 1901 Portsmouth I
- 1903 Huddersfield
- 1906 Southend
- 1910 Ebbw Vale
- 1914 Castleford
- 1920 Swindon
- 1926 Wolverhampton
- 1928 Supernumerary
References
Primitive Methodist Magazine 1912/241 (wife); 1918/412
Methodist Minutes 1947/136
W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990
Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers
Note: In the 1911 census return Edward recorded all the children using their second or third Christian names; Atkin, Doreen, Kathleen, Eileen and Watson.