▶Date of birth:   10 September 1872       Place of birth: Burrington, Devon

▶Father:  Elias Jenkins     Mother:  Mary Ann Godfrey

▶Spouse(s):  (Bessie) Emily Carter    Date(s) of marriage: 13 August 1902      Place(s) of marriage: Bible Christian Chapel, Witheridge, Devon

▶Occupation: Methodist minister

▶Lifestory: Elias was the second son of agricultural labourer Elias Jenkins, and his wife Mary Ann. Brought up in Devon he attended a Bible Christian college from 1894 and by 1901, at the age of twenty-eight, he was at work as a Bible Christian Minister. In 1903, when he lived at Newport, on the Isle of Wight, he married Bessie Emily Carter, of West Yeo, Witheridge, Devon; they had three daughters and one son. He was appointed third minister on the Sandown and Ventnor Bible Christian circuit in 1906, the year that the Bible Christians merged into the United Methodist Church; in 1911 he was still serving in Ventnor.

Over the years, his ministries were at St Austell, Cardiff, Holsworthy (North Devon), Ventnor, Bristol, Redruth, Cheltenham (Royal Well Chapel, around 1920), Barry (by 1925), and Bideford (from 1929, where he became Superintendent Minister, until 1935), with a final second ministry at Cheltenham when, in 1936, he was appointed Superintendent of the Cheltenham Methodist circuit and was Pastor of the High Street Methodist Church. After the further Methodist union of 1932 Elias served as a Methodist. From about 1937 to 1938 the family lived at 2 Clarence Square, Pittville, moving (when Elias was largely retired) in 1939-40 to South Cleeve, 40 Evesham Road, Pittville.

Elias Jenkins was also a keen member of the Cheltenham Bowls Club: he regarded bowls as a “certain corrective” to the “irritability which so frequently afflicts members of the male sex”, and on one Saturday afternoon conducted two weddings and managed to fit in a bowls match. He died at South Cleeve in 1939, at the age of sixty-seven.

▶Moved to Pittville from:  (1) Redruth; (2) Bideford, Devon      Moved from Pittville to: (1) Barry; (2) (deceased)

▶Date of death: 3 November 1939       Place of death: Cheltenham

▶Date of burial: 8 November        Place of burial: Bideford, Devon

▶Notes:  not in Crockfords 1947      ID: 14009

Contributor(s):  John Simpson