He graduated at the University College, Bangor and became a schoolmaster and later an HMI in Wales. He was the author of standard historical textbooks, as well as works on Welsh Methodist history, notably his Welsh Wesleyan Methodism 1800-1858 (1935), based on his MA thesis. In 1946 he was instrumental in founding the Historical Society of Welsh Methodism and its journal Bathafarn, which he edited until 1970. He was President of the Society from 1970 until his death on 13 October 1996.