Now that you’ve discovered your ancestors were Free Methodists, how do you start to find information about them?
Once you know the timeframe, as well as the name of the town, county and province in which your Free Methodist ancestors lived, you can start to determine which Free Methodist congregation they might have joined.
The Robb Centre can help you with this because we have a collection of Annual Conference Minutes books starting in 1883 and continuing to 1964. These books include reports of each conference of the Free Methodist Church in North America. They are organized by year and then by Conference. Ontario, for example, was divided into two conferences. Within each conference is a listing of all its congregations.
By taking a look in these books, you will not only learn the names of the congregations within each conference, you will see statistical and financial information relating to the size of the congregation as well as the names of pastors, deacons, retired pastors, committee members, and delegates to the conference meetings. Reports of the Women’s Mission Societies are also included. You might be surprised how little clues found within these minutes can help to lead you closer to your ancestors or give you a snapshot in time of the history of any given church.
You just never know what you might find, until you start looking and the Robb Centre’s collection of Annual Conference Minutes are a great place to begin!
Once you know the timeframe, as well as the name of the town, county and province in which your Free Methodist ancestors lived, you can start to determine which Free Methodist congregation they might have joined.
The Robb Centre can help you with this because we have a collection of Annual Conference Minutes books starting in 1883 and continuing to 1964. These books include reports of each conference of the Free Methodist Church in North America. They are organized by year and then by Conference. Ontario, for example, was divided into two conferences. Within each conference is a listing of all its congregations.
By taking a look in these books, you will not only learn the names of the congregations within each conference, you will see statistical and financial information relating to the size of the congregation as well as the names of pastors, deacons, retired pastors, committee members, and delegates to the conference meetings. Reports of the Women’s Mission Societies are also included. You might be surprised how little clues found within these minutes can help to lead you closer to your ancestors or give you a snapshot in time of the history of any given church.
You just never know what you might find, until you start looking and the Robb Centre’s collection of Annual Conference Minutes are a great place to begin!
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