Hi All   Obituary of Henry TINDALL   Henry TINDALL was borb at Grengley-on-the-Hill in Nottinghamshire on the 30th of March 1831. He arrived in Capetown with his parents in the early part of 1836, and three years later accompanied them to Great Namaqualand where his father had been engaged to assist the Rev. E. COOK in the Wesleyan Mission at Nisbett's Bath. In 1841 he was placed under the tuiuion of the Rev. Holt OKES, D.D., at Wynberg. After a brief stay he joined his parents then in Damaraland, returning to Capetown to attend classes at the South African College in 1848. It was then, when about 17 years of age, under the ministry of Rev. Thomas W. HODGSON, that he definitely decided for Christ and commenced his career of Christian activity and usefulness. He began to preach, and having offered himself for the work of God, he was unanimously recommended as a candidate for the ministry at the Cape of Good Hope District Meeting in 1852, and accepted at the ensuing Conference. As he was fimiliar with the country and the people, and possessed special linguistic qualifications, he was at once appointed to assist his father, the Rev. Joseph TINDALL, then labouring in Great Namaqualand. There he spent three arduous years amid difficulties, dangers and privations that furnished material for many an interesting and instructive public platform speech in later years. With the exception of four years in the Capetown English Circuit, the whole of his active ministry was given to Mission work in the Cape of Good Hope District, for which his thorough knowledge of the Dutch language gave him a special fitness; and by his varied and untiring efforts for the social as well as for the spiritual well being of the people, he left the stamp of a zealous, sagacious and successful missionary on every Circuit in which he was appointed to labour His special knowledge and qualifications enabled him to take an active and leading part in the official work of the District, and in the movement which led up to the formation of the South African Conference. He was one of the first Assistant Secretaries, and in that capacity he continued to act, until his election to the Presidential Chair in 1888, the duties of which he discharged with great with great courtesy and dignity. His Christian character was of a robust manly type, and his mental powers were keen and active. In the administration of affairs he was exceedingly judicious, and his pulpit ministrations were characterised by careful preparation, sound reasoning, and clear practicalexposition. Owing to ill-health he was compelled to retire from the active work of the ministry in 1898, but continued to render valuable assistance,in various ways until within a short time of his decease. Physical weakness gradually overcame him, but his mental faculties maintained all their accustomed alertness, and his interest in the work of the Redeemer's Kingdom remained unabated to the end. After several mont attractive personality that ensured him a hs of of painful weariness and suffering, borne with great fortitude and Christian resignation, he passed to his reward on the 16th July, 1909, in the 78th year of his age, and the 57th of his ministry. Mr. TINDALL was pre-eminently "abrother beloved", genial, sympathetic, catholic-minded, well-informed, an excellent conversationalist, and endowed with a rare sense of humour and a strikingly attractive personality that ensured him a welcome among all classes, and won for him an esteem and affection far beyond the limits of his own denomination. His intimate acquintance with many of the pioneer missionaries of our Church, more particularly in the Cape of Good Hope District, furnished him with a rich fund of historical incident and episode in connection with the inception and development of our work, and his departure severs another, and almost last link with those who laid the foundations of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in this Country. From: Wesleyan Methodist Conference Minutes of 1910   Transcribed by  Darryl Allwright darryl.allwright@yahoo.com