Author: Hirst, Thomas
Biography:
HIRST, Thomas (1789-1870: ancestry.com)
“Hirst” along with the alternative spelling “Hurst” was not an uncommon name in the Midlands where the author of Alfred spent almost all his life. He was probably the son of Thomas and Mary Hirst born in Knottingley, Yorkshire, and baptised on 8 Mar. 1789. He worshipped in the Wesleyan or Primitive Methodist church and may be the Thomas Hirst who went as a missionary to Sierra Leone in 1813. Back in England, he moved to Nottinghamshire where he worked as a “colliery agent.” On 10 Jun. 1819 he married Mary Hudson (d 1857) at St. Alkmund, Derby; they do not appear to have had children but their niece Martha Hudson, a young dressmaker, was living with them at Warfe, Watnall, Notts. at the time of the 1841 Census. Though he did not become a Methodist minister, “Brother Hirst” served often as a lay preacher and was instrumental in establishing the Methodist Chapel at Ilkeston, Derby, in 1852-3. He took a special interest in music for services of worship and Sunday Schools: his first publication on the subject was Familiar Dialogues (Nottingham, 1816), a pamphlet about the proper use of music in divine service, and his most important The Music of the Church (1841), which comprised a survey of the history of music in general. He also composed and published Hymns, Dialogues, and Addresses (1839, often reprinted). Rev. John Hirst (1803-98), minister of the Methodist Chapel in Leeds, subscribed to Hirst’s last verse collection, The Autobiography of the Bible, and Other Poems (1865, with a portrait frontispiece); he must have been related but was not a brother. (In 1832 “Mr. John Hirst” had subscribed to Alfred.) A novel, John Wimbleton; or, The Triumph of Principle, a Story of Methodist Facts (1870), was published shortly before his death on 30 June 1870 at Kimberley, Notts., where he was buried at Holy Trinity Church on 3 July. He left an estate of under £300, with John Hudson as executor. (ancestry.com 25 Jul. 2022; findmypast.com 25 Jul. 2022; Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine 37 [1814], 283; information from AA) HJ