Roe, Henry
1842-1920; e.m. 1865
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Pioneer PM missionary and author. Born at Old Lenton, Nottingham on 1 April 1842 he began preaching in 1858; an early influence was Dr Samuel Antliff (see Antliff brothers). He entered the ministry in 1865 and travelled in four circuits before joining R.W. Burnett (1842-1902) as the PM Church's pioneer missionaries to Fernando Po. Roe stayed in West Africa for two years (1870-72), publishing Mission to Africa (1873), West African Scenes (1874) and Fernando Po Mission: A Consecutive History (1882). A succession of English circuits followed his return from Africa, and he retired to St. Ives, Cornwall in 1899. A keen traveller, he advocated British Israelite views, notably in his Israel's World: Origin and Destiny of the British Race, Colonies and Empire (1884), and appeared in the frontispiece photograph of his Holy Land Tour (1910) dressed as Abraham. He attended the PM Conference at Hull in 1920, in order to be present at the celebration of the jubilee of the Fernando Po mission, and died on 7 October of that year.

Sources
  • PM Magazine 1921, page 801.
  • W. Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits (Loughborough, 1990)
  • H.B. Kendall, The Origin and History of the PM Church (London, n.d.), vol. ii, pp. 487-94
  • John Pritchard, Methodists and their Missionary Societies, 1760-1900 (Farnham, 2013), pp. 192-94

Entry written by: DCD
Category: Person
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