▶Date of birth:  24 September 1854        Place of birth: Hook, Yorkshire

▶Father:  Robert Dixon     Mother: Mary Ward

▶Spouse(s):  Ada Rebecca Elkington    Date(s) of marriage:  7 August 1883     Place(s) of marriage: Wesleyan Chapel, Bridgend, Glamorganshire

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Wesleyan Methodist minister), Wesleyan Methodist missionary, Translator; Ice-packer

▶Lifestory: Although the Revd. Robert Dixon served several parishes,including Cheltenham, as either Curate or Vicar, he was perhaps best known for his work as a missionary, and translator of parts of the Bible, in Gambia. He was born in 1854 at Hook, near Goole in Yorkshire, the son of farm labourer Robert Dixon, and his wife Mary (née Ward). At the time of the 1871 census he lived at Hook and worked as an “ice-packer”.

He trained as a Wesleyan Methodist at Richmond College in London, and in 1879 he was appointed to take charge of the education department in Gambia, where he spent three years as a missionary; he acquired a working knowledge of the Jolluth (Wolof) language and translated part of the New Testament into it (the translation was subsequently used in Wesleyan mission schools).

Dixon served his itinerancy in Britain at many stations, starting at Watlington in Oxfordshire in 1882. During a spell in the south he worked at Wantage, then in Berkshire, until 1885 he was married, in 1883, to Ada Rebecca Elkington, of Llanblethian, Glamorganshire, at Bridgend. He was then sent north: Pockington 1886-8, and then Northallerton 1889-91; in Northallerton in 1891 he lived with his wife and four daughters at the Minister’s House in Brompton, Yorkshire. After Northallerton he was stationed at Thirsk 1895-7, and at Tadcaster 1898-1901; in 1901 he lived with his family, his wife, and three daughters, at the Wesley House, East End, Wetherby, near Tadcaster.

In 1901 he moved over the border into Lancashire when he was allocated to the Ormskirk district until 1903. In 1904 he achieved his first Superintending Minister’s office, at Padiham, Lancashire.

Then, in 1905, Dixon was surprisingly asked to return to his former post as a missionary at Bathurst, Gambia, to which he acceded; his wife and family remained in England. He returned and in 1909 was stationed at Pateley Bridge in Yorkshire, where he and his family lived at Wesley Villa at the time of the 1911 census. He remained at Pateley Bridge until 1912, and in 1913 was appointed Superintendent Minister at the Cheltenham district; between 1914 and 1917 he lived at the Wesleyan Superintendent’s residence, 27 Clarence Square in Pittville.

After Cheltenham the Revd. Dixon moved to Diss in Norfolk as Superintendent of the district where, after three years in charge, in 1919 he was appointed to the same office on the Pickering circuit (York district). he retired in 1925 to live in Holme Road, Market Weighton, Yorkshire, where he died in 1939, at the age of eighty-four. His estate at death was valued for probate at just under £680.

▶Moved to Pittville from:  Pateley Bridge, Yorkshire      Moved from Pittville to: Diss, Norfolk

▶Date of death: 28 February 1939       Place of death:  Market Weighton, Yorkshire

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes:  George G. Findlay and William West Holdsworth, The history of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (1921-4)       ID: 14590

Contributor(s):  John Simpson