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Author: Martin, Thomas

Biography:

MARTIN, Thomas (1782-1866: ancestry.co.uk)

The GM obituary, corroborated by the 1861 Census, gave his date and place of birth as Falmouth 1780 and this was followed by Bibliotheca Cornubiensis (1874). However, he was baptised on 19 May 1782 at St. Gluvias, Cornwall, the eldest son of Marten Martin (1747-1825) and his wife Ann (or Anne) Watts (1758-1847), who had married at Budock, Cornwall, in 1781. They were converts to Wesleyan Methodism. He had four brothers, one of whom, Edward, died on a voyage from the West Indies (The Stranger at Home, 103-6). Nothing is known of his education but in his teens he travelled the Redruth Circuit, preaching to miners. He probably assisted Dr. Adam Clarke in his duties at St. Austell. He preached at various locations 1804-11: St Austell, Helston, Salisbury, Birmingham, London, Bristol. While resident at Bristol he married Mary Pearce on 21 July 1812 at Landrake, Cornwall. (Members of her family subscribed to The Stranger At Home in 1824.) After marriage they moved to Margate, Kent, where he was minister 1812-14 and a daughter was born in 1813. There then followed itinerant preaching with four more children being born at Worcester, Devonport, Hayle, and Truro (Cornwall). He published The Manger (1816) while at Tunbridge Wells, A Sunday School Hymn Book (1821) while he was Minister at Pump Street Methodist Chapel, Worcester, and The Stranger at Home (1824), his most extensive collection, while at Devonport. In the 1820s and 1830s he was mostly in Devon and Cornwall. In 1833 he was appointed Superintendent of the Devonport District but he signed The Centenary (1839), a commemorative poem on the history of Methodism, from The Grove, Hackney, London. By 1851 he had returned to Kent where he was Minister at the Bethel Chapel, Rochester, but shortly after became supernumerary and semi-retired due to ill health. By 1861, he and his wife, an unmarried daughter, Sophia Martin, and an orphaned grandson had settled at Plumstead Common where he died at 3 Ebenezer Terrace on 18 Jan. 1866, aged 85, and was buried on 25 Jan. at St. Margaret’s, Plumstead. Mary Martin died in Mar. 1867 at the same address. (ancestry.co.uk; David Walsh, haine.org.uk/stranger-at-home; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis [1874], 1: 337-8; Methodist Magazine May 1811 [portrait]; Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine Sept. 1866, 848; GM, March 1866, 445; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 21 March 1867; GRO death cert.) AA

 

Books written (2):

London: Thomas Blanshard and William Kent, 1816