SUTCLIFFE, INGHAM (1807-1883)

SUTCLIFFE, INGHAM, Methodist minister, Miramichi circuit, 1870-73; bap. Kildwick, Yorkshire, England, 13 Dec 1807, s/o Ingham Sutcliffe Sr and Sarah Emmott; m. 1st, Jean Buchan Blaikie, of St John's, Nfld; 2nd, 1848, Maria Billing, of Halifax, and 3rd, 1869, Annie Amelia Bent, of Amherst, N.S.; d. Yarmouth, N.S., 6 Apr 1883.

Ingham Sutcliffe was ordained by the British Wesleyan Conference in 1831 before being sent to Canada as a missionary. Three years later he was transferred to Newfoundland, where he ministered for ten years. From 1844 onward he was posted to circuits in Fredericton, Saint John, and elsewhere in New Brunswick, as well as in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. While he was based in Fredericton he officiated at the opening of a new Methodist chapel at Derby, on 4 March 1845.

Sutcliffe, who was both a charismatic preacher and a skilled administrator, received his last assignment in 1870 as superintendent of the Miramichi Methodist circuit, based at Chatham. During his three years in the position he had as field assistants Augustus B. Morris (1870-71), James P. Strothard (1871-72), and Alfred H. Webb (1872-73), the first of whom became his son-in-law when he married Lizzie Susan Cooney Sutcliffe in 1873.

After he completed a three-year term at Chatham, Sutcliffe retired in Nova Scotia. There were children born of his first two marriages. His third wife, who was much younger than he, survived until 1888.