Author: Wrenshall, John
Biography:
WRENSHALL, John (1761-1821: ancestry.com)
The son of Margaret (Bray) and Thomas Wrenshall, he was born in Preston, Lancashire. At 21 he married Mary Bennington in Halifax, Yorkshire. They had eleven children together, eight born in England of whom three died in early childhood, and three born in Pittsburgh after they emigrated in 1794. Wrenshall became a prosperous merchant and a Methodist preacher, active in the church even before they left England. In 1803 he was ordained a deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church by Bishop Francis Asbury; for some years before then the Methodists of Pittsburgh had been holding their meetings in his parlour. Though he left Pittsburgh for Philadelphia, as his Farewell indicates, he returned in 1819 and stayed for the rest of his life. After the death of his first wife in 1812, he married Ann McElhinny, but she died in 1814 and an infant daughter did not long survive her. His papers, including an autobiographical journal that he wrote for his children between 1815 and 1817, are held in the library of the University of Pittsburgh. Wrenshall is buried in the Melrose Cemetery in Bridgeville PA between his two wives. (ancestry.com 12 Mar. 2021; "John Wrenshall and Isaac Craig," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 9:1 [1885]) HJ
Other Names:
- J. W.