Author: OLIVERS, Thomas
Biography:
OLIVERS, Thomas (1725-99: ODNB)
Olivers was baptised on 8 Sept. 1725 at Tregynon, Monmouthshire, Wales, the elder of two sons born to Thomas Olivers and his wife Penelope Humphries. His father died in Dec. 1728 and his mother in Mar. 1729. Thomas was cared for by a great-uncle in Fordon, Powys, but he also soon died, leaving the boy with funds to pay for his education. Much of the information about Olivers’s life comes from an autobiographical account, published first as a pamphlet and subsequently reprinted in The Lives of Early Methodist Preachers. It includes a vivid depiction of the wild behaviour that characterised his youth. Oliver was apprenticed to a cobbler when he was eighteen but he fled to England after a scandal erupted over his treatment of a young woman. In about 1745 he heard the Methodist preacher George Whitefield and underwent a thoroughgoing conversion. John Wesley (q.v.) appointed Olivers as one of his itinerant preachers and in that role he travelled widely in England, Scotland, and Ireland. On 2 Sept. 1758 he married Eleanor Green in St. Peter’s, Leeds; they do not appear to have had children. From 1775 to 1789 he was the superintendent of the Methodist press, a position which included responsibility for the Arminian Magazine. Olivers also wrote hymns and numerous pamphlets in defence of Methodism and of Wesley’s teachings; the best known of his hymns is “The God of Abraham Praise,” based on a Hebrew hymn that he had heard at the Great Synagogue in London. Olivers moved to London after 1789. No record of Eleanor’s death has been located but Olivers married for a second time in London on 7 Nov. 1796; his wife was Ann Ellis. Olivers died in Hoxton, London, on 7 Mar. 1799 and he was buried at Wesley’s chapel, Islington, in a vault containing the body of Wesley and four other Methodist preachers. Olivers had made his will on 29 Nov. 1796 and he left all but £50 of his estate to his second wife. (ODNB 10 Feb. 2025; ancestry.co.uk 10 Feb. 2025; findmypast.co.uk 10 Feb. 2025; T. Jackson, ed. The Lives of Early Methodist Preachers, 5th edn [1865-66]) SR