Luke Tyerman Books: Dictionary of Methodism Entry

Wesleyan Methodist minister, born on 26 February 1820 at Osmotherly and trained at Didsbury College. His active ministry ended after 19 years because of ill health, but he devoted 25 years to Methodist history and wrote a number of standard works, including lives of Samuel Wesley senior (1866), John Wesley (1871), John Fletcher ('Wesley's designated successor') (1882) and George Whitefield (1876-7) and The Oxford Methodists (1873). He died in London on 20 March 1889.

His second wife was the sister of Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge (prosperous draper of Newcastle upon Tyne and local preacher, staunch pillar of Wesleyan Methodism).

Tyerman, Luke (1820-1889)

British Wesleyan Methodist, was a notable Methodist historian. He was bom on Feb. 26, 1820, at Osmotherley, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, and entered the Wesleyan Ministry in 1844. A Methodist preacher of the old school, he was particularly intense in his attacks on popery. Ill health forced him to superannuate in 1864, and he devoted the rest of his life to his scholarship. Although much had been written about eighteenth century Methodism before his time, Tyerman was the first historian to produce serious, scholarly biographies of John Wesley, George Whitefield, and John Fletcher (the "designated successor"). Tyerman's life of John Wesley has only been superseded in recent years, and there is still no other important study of Fletcher. He might properly be called the father of modem historical studies. His publications included: Life and Times of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, 1866; Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, 1871; The Oxford Methodists, 1873; Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, 1876-77; Wesley's Designated Successor, 1882. He died on March 30, 1889.
H. MORLEY Rattenbury in Encyclopedia of World Methodism 1974