OWENS, OWEN (1794 - 1838), leader of the 'Little Wesleyan' movement

He lived at Caer-gron, Llaneilian (Amlwch), and was a Wesleyan local preacher in 1816. The Wesleyan local preachers in North Wales were at the time kicking against the authority of the ordained ministers, and in 1831 twelve of them, with Owens at their head, met to consider the situation. On 6 October 1831 they decided to secede from the Wesleyan Connexion and to set up a new connexion. Owen Owens was the prime mover, and he travelled extensively in Caernarvonshire, Montgomeryshire, and Cardiganshire on behalf of the new connexion, not without a good measure of success - and of loss to the Wesleyan churches. His death, at his own home, 10 March 1838, aged 44, was a heavy blow to the seceders, who were already in financial difficulty. Their members gradually returned to the bosom of Wesley's Connexion, or joined other 'Wesleyan Reform' movements, or, some of them, joined congregations of older Nonconformist bodies.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Sources

• A. H. Williams, Welsh Wesleyan Methodism, 1800-1858 its origins, growth and secessions (1935), chapter vii. 98

Additional Links

• Wikidata: Q20734109

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/