DMBI: A Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland

Dymond family

John Dymond (1835-1910; e.m. 1857), BC minister, was born at Beaford, Devon on 12 May 1835 and served first as a hired local preacher. He was President of the 1879 Conference and addressed the 1881 Ecumenical Methodist Conference on 'Training Young Men for the Ministry'. He advocated the opening of mission stations in the populous northern towns and was judged one of the saints of the Connexion whose face 'shone with the radiance of the divine light within'. He died at Bristol on 2 April 1910.

His son, George Pearse Dymond (1864-1939), UM layman and educationalist, was born in Barnstaple on 13 May 1864. From 1887 to 1937 he was headmaster of Hoe Grammar School, Plymouth, which he built up from 50 to 400 boys (including Isaac Foot). His educational ideals and practice set standards for Plymouth. He twice visited the USA on educational missions, including the Morley Commission of Teachers, 1906-7. He was a JP, a Liberal Councillor from 1917 on and mayor of Plymouth in 1931. One of the UM Guardian Representatives 1910-32, he was secretary of the UM Conference in 1913 and, as a representative ex-UM layman, was Vice-President of the 1934 Methodist Conference. He wrote a life of his fellow educationalist Thomas Ruddle. He died in Plymouth on 25 September 1939 and was succeeded as Headmaster by his younger son Frances ('Frank') Dymond.

Another son of John Dymond, Francis John Dymond (1866-1932; e.m. 1886), was born at Torquay and served his whole ministry in the Yunnan Mission in China, as a colleague of Samuel Pollard. When revival among the tribes people imposed acute strains on the unity of the Mission, his steady, balanced leadership was of paramount importance. He married a colleague, Maud Cannon from New Zealand and their son and three daughters also became missionaries in China: Frank S. Dymond (1896-1929; e.m. 1925), a medical missionary in Wenchow 1925-28 and Yunnan 1928-29; Constance Muriel Dymond (1900-1991) worked among women in Yunnan 1925-48 and in 1928 married a fellow missionary, Kenneth W. May (1902-1963; e.m. 1923); Dorothy E. Dymond (1906-1993) was a nurse in Hunnan 1936-50; and Roxie D. Dymond went to Yunnan in 1928 and married J.O. Fraser of the China Inland Mission in 1929.

A third son of John Dymond, Albert Edward Dymond (1882-1967; e.m. 1904), after twenty years in home circuits, served in Sierra Leone 1924-25 and 1930-1946.

Sources

Methodist Recorder, 19 July 1934; 14 Jan. 1937; 5 Oct. 1939, 29 December 1966, 19 January 2018
UM Magazine 1908 pp.296-8
Transactionsof the Devonshire Association, 1940 p.16
W. Ivor Thompson, The History of Hoe Grammar School and the Dymond Family (Plymouth, 1987)
For G.P. Dymond:
William John Michell, Brief Biographical Sketches of Bible Christian Ministers and Laymen (1906), vol. 1 pp.258-64
Richard Pyke, Men and Memories (1948) pp.91-3
Conference Handbook, 1934
For F.J. Dymond:
William John Michell, Brief Biographical Sketches of Bible Christian Ministers and Laymen (1906), vol.2 pp.81-86

Dymond family

Occupations

See also