Methodist Ministers

C.W. Jefferys' notes about this picture from The Picture Gallery of Canadian History Volume 2

William Black, 1760-1834, "the father of Methodism in Nova Scotia," was born in Yorkshire, and came to Nova Scotia with his parents in 1775. He became a preacher in 1780 and eventually was appointed General Superintendent of Wesleyan Missions in British America.

William Case, 1780-1855, was born in Massachusetts. He was first stationed on the Bay of Quinte. Later he became Presiding Elder of the Methodist Church in Canada and the United States, and Superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada. In 1828 he was Superintendent of Indian Missions in Upper Canada, and from 1837 to 1851 in charge of the Wesleyan Indian School at Alnwick, Ontario, where he died.

Nathan Bangs came to Canada as a teacher and surveyor. Converted to Methodism, he was sent to organize a circuit in the Long Point settlement on Lake Erie. Here and in the Niagara district. on Yonge Street, on the Bay of Quinte, on the Thames, at Detroit and Quebec, he laboured until 1807, when he was transferred to the United States. He visited Canada frequently thereafter.

James Richardson, 1795-1875, born in Kingston, served in the Provincial Marine, and lost an arm at Sackett's Harbour in 1813. He joined the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1818, became a local preacher, and an itinerant minister in 1824. He was editor of The Christian Guardian in 1832. Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada in 1858.

James Evans, 1801-1846, born in England, came to Canada in 1823. Was teacher at the Indian school at Rice Lake in 1828. Ordained minister in 1833, he was sent as missionary to the St. Clair Indians in 1834, to Lake Superior in 1834, and thence to the Indians of the North-West, where he was stationed at Norway House.

Five sons of Col. Joseph Ryerson, of Long Point, became Methodist ministers, George, William, John, Edwy and Egerton, the most noted.

For information on the early Methodist ministers consult Case and his Cotemporaries, by Rev. John Carroll, Playter's History of Methodism in Canada, and The First Century of Methodism in Canada, by Rev. J. E. Sanderson. The latter contains many portraits.