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Author: Slack, John

Biography:

SLACK, John (1775-1833: ancestry.co.uk)

He was born on 28 Dec. 1775 at Belton, near Epworth, Lincolnshire, the son of Benjamin Slack (1748-96) and his wife Jane Garratt (1747-1821), who had married in 1772. Nothing is known of his education but he underwent conversion to Methodism  in 1794 and by 1796 had started to preach. He became a Wesleyan minister at the 1799 Conference and became a lifelong itinerant preacher, mostly in the North of England. He travelled in the Whitby circuit 1811-13 where he published The Pursuit (1813), a defence of Methodism and attack on Catholicism, and two other short works on the same subject. He was Superintendent of the Wakefield Circuit 1824-6 and of York 1826-7. He married Mary Levick (1777-1826) on 29 May 1803 at Blyth, Nottingham. They went on to have at least six children. Mary Slack died in York on 28 Sept. 1826 and was buried at Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, where there is still a grave. He then married Lucy Ann Nayler (1794-1866) on 2 Oct. 1827 at St. Martin Coney Street, York. They had a further three children. He died of apoplexy on 28 Apr. 1833, at Sheepridge, near Huddersfield, leaving a pregnant widow with nine children. He was buried at the West Parade Wesleyan Chapel, Wakefield, on 2 May 1833. The work listed here consists of his eulogy, possibly to Elizabeth Johnson, several of whose poems were printed in the volume. (She was not John Wesley’s friend and correspondent of that name who died in Bristol in 1798 but may possibly have been a relative.) (ancestry.co.uk 14 Aug. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 14 Aug. 2022; Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine June 1833, 462, and Sept. 1833, 678; Whitby Authors, 42-3; Leeds Intelligencer 5 Oct. 1826; Yorkshire Gazette 6 Oct. 1827, 4 May 1833, 14 Apr. 1866) AA

 

Books written (1):

Stokesley: printed by W. Pratt, 1815