OLIVER(S), THOMAS (1725-1799), Wesleyan preacher;
b. at Tregynon, Mont., in 1725 (christened 8 Sept.). He was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and became a travelling craftsman. He was converted by Whitefield, at Bristol, but joined the Wesleyans. In 1753, John Wesley appointed him to itinerate, and he did so for twenty-two years. In 1775 Wesley appointed Oliver superintendent of his printing in London, but had to remove him from office in 1789 for inefficiency. Yet the friendship between the two continued unabated, and when Oliver d. (in London, in March 1799), he was buried in Wesley's grave. Oliver wrote much, in prose and in verse, but is remembered today only for his hymn ‘The God of Abram praise.’ He was wont to visit Wales, and is probably the man whom Wesley (momentarily forgetting Harri Llwyd, q.v.) described as his only Welsh-speaking preacher. Oliver was the intermediary employed by Wesley to persuade Owen Davies (1752-1830) (q.v.) to become an itinerant preacher.
Bibliography:
- D.N.B. (by J. E. Lloyd);
- R. Williams, Mont. Worthies (fuller);
- A. H. Williams, Welsh Wesleyan Methodism, 1800-1858, 58, 86.
Author:
Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, C.B.E., D.Litt., Ll.D., F.S.A., (1881-1969), Bangor.
