Born in Belfast of Methodist parents, William Valentine & Eliza Hill, on 16 November 1889, A Wesley Hill intended entering the teaching profession. But following a call to the Christian ministry he became a lay evangelist in 1909 in Bandon, Cork. Accepted for the ministry in 1910, in 1911 he entered the Methodist College and graduated with a BA, at Queens University, Belfast in 1912, in mathematics and classical Greek. In 1913 he was appointed to the Hunan District, China, first at Liuyang and then at Yungchowfu, where he taught Christianity and learned Chinese. Disturbed by issues raised by the outbreak of war, he resigned in 1917. After a short period with the YMCA in Japan, he served in France with the British Army behind enemy lines and was mentioned in dispatches. On demobilisation he went to Queen's University to study medicine and graduated in 1927. He became a G.P. in Manchester and then in Wrexham. His Christian Faith remained strong and he cared for his patients' medical and spiritual needs.
He married Frances McGuigian and they had two children, but Frances died in childbirth. He then married his wife's younger sister Olivia Mary who died in 1978 aged 82, and finally married Vera Williams in 1981. In 1949 the Irish Conference reaffirmed his ordination and permitted him to be without 'pastoral charge', while enabling him to exercise a preaching and sacramental ministry in the Wrexham Circuit. He was the 'medical advisor' to the Wrexham football club, President of the Wrexham & District Medical Society, President of the Chester and North Wales Medical Society and an elected member of the British Medical Association, serving as the Chairman of the Welsh Committee. He was made a Fellow of the BMA in 1966.
HisWesley Historical Society Lecture, John Wesley Among the Physicians A Study of 18th Century Medicine was published in 1958. He also wrote the introduction to the 1960 edition of John Wesley's Primitive Physick.
He died at Wrexham on 20 September 1988.
Entry written by: DHR
Category: Person
Comment on this entry