Background
John Dickins was born on August 24, 1747 in London, England.
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John Dickins
Edit ProfileEducation
Dickins received a good education, and came to America some years before the Revolution.
Career
Dickins was converted in 1774, began evangelistic work in Virginia, and was admitted to the itinerant ministry on trial at the Conference of 1777, bringing to the Methodist movement an intellectual equipment, an interest in literature and learning, and an administrative wisdom, which few of his contemporaries possessed.
He traveled extensively in North Carolina and Virginia until 1781, when the Conference Minutes list him among those “who desist from travelling. ”
On April 3, 1783, Asbury, then in North Carolina, records: “This day I prevailed with Brother Dickens to go to New-York, where I expect him to be far more useful than in his present station”. Here, with the exception of 1785, he labored until 1789, rehabilitating John Street Church, cradle of Methodism in America, which the removal of Loyal ists, and other war conditions, had weakened.
He became an intimate friend and counselor of Asbury. They were “like unto Jonathan and David, one in hand, mind, and mutual affection”. He was the first to meet and advise with Dr. Coke when the latter arrived as Wesley’s emissary in 1784. At the “Christmas Conference” held the same year, he was one of the leading spirits, offering the resolution which constituted the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, the name of which he himself had suggested.
At this Conference he was ordained deacon, but was not made elder until September 16, 1786.
With Thomas Morrell he was delegated by the Conference of 1789 to wait on President Washington with a copy of the bishops’ congratulatory address. He also accompanied them when the President received them and made his reply.
He was associated with Asbury and Coke in the founding of Cokesbury College, and when the Conference of 1789 established the Methodist Book Concern, he offered the loan of all his savings, £ 120, about $600, to finance it.
He was appointed Book Steward, being then pastor of the church in Philadelphia, St. George’s. During the nine years of his management, which included the superintendency of printing, binding, and distribution, he made the Book Concern a permanent and increasingly valuable institution. Besides issuing more than one hundred and fourteen thousand copies of books and pamphlets, he published the Arminian Magazine (1789 - 90) and the Methodist Magazine (January 1797- August 1798). Although urged to seek safety, he continued at his work during the yellow fever epidemic of 1798, and died of that disease.
Achievements
Personality
Dickins was generous, the just, the faithful, skillful.
Quotes from others about the person
“What I have greatly feared for years hath now taken place. Dickins, the generous, the just, the faithful, skillful Dickins, is dead!”
Connections
Dickins was one of the few married men in the itinerancy, having married Elizabeth Yancey of North Carolina; and the text of Asbury’s ordination sermon included the admonition: “Even so must their (the deacons’) wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. ”
References
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Born
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Died
September 27, 1798 (aged 51) -
Nationality
American -
Religion
Episcopalian