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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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PICKLES, MICHAEL (1798-1877)

PICKLES, MICHAEL, Methodist missionary, Miramichi circuit, 1830-31; b. Lower Town, Haworth parish, Yorkshire, England, 29 Mar 1798 (bap. 29 May 1798), s/o John "Pighills"; m. 1st, 1832, Abigail Hayward, of Sussex, N.B., and 2nd, 1834, Fanny Black Wilson, of Dorchester, N.B.; d. England, 9 Apr 1877.

No biographical sketch of Michael Pickles has neglected to note that when he was a young man he attended services at the Church of England in his home parish of Haworth, England, the perpetual curate of which was Patrick Brontë, father of the novelists Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë.

Pickles was ordained as a minister of the Methodist church in England in 1827 and sent by the missionary committee of that body to serve in New Brunswick. Upon his arrival in Saint John he was directed to Sussex, where he worked for two years. He then spent a year in Fredericton and Sheffield before being assigned in June 1830 as the first resident Methodist minister on the Miramichi. Two years previously the Rev. John B. Strong had visited the faithful on the river and encouraged them to establish churches. At that time, the local preacher Robert Tweedy was the spiritual leader of the Irish Methodist settlers at Williamstown, and prior to Pickles's arrival, Joseph Spratt and others had been holding Sunday services at the courthouse in Newcastle and in a rented room in a Chatham hotel. A committee headed by Robert Morrow had raised funds to build a church in Chatham, and both this church and the first Methodist church at Newcastle were erected during Pickles's one-year term as missionary.

In 1831 Pickles left to take up a new assignment at Bridgewater, N.S., and the Rev. Enoch Wood became his successor on the Miramichi circuit. Pickles was said to have returned to the Miramichi for a short time in the late 1830s, but the records are in conflict on the particulars. He ministered in more than a dozen other Methodist circuits in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia before his retirement in 1863. His last place of residence was Canning, N.S. He was visiting in England at the time of his death.

Pickles's first wife, Abigail Hayward, died in childbirth, at age twenty, and her infant son died ten days later. Among the children of his marriage to Fanny B. Wilson who lived to adulthood were the Rev. Fletcher H. W. Pickles and the Rev. Frederick Pickles, whose ministry was conducted largely in the United States.

Sources

[b/d] annual 1877 [bap] LDS-IGI [m] NB Courier 14 Jul 1832, 19 Apr 1834 / Betts (BB); Cornish; Gleaner 15 Jun 1830; Hoddinott; Post 26 Apr 1877; Smith


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