May 25th Billy Bray (Death)

     

Born just outside St. Day, Billy Bray and his siblings were brought up by their grandfather who was a committed Methodist.

For his first seven years of work, Bray was employed in both Devon and Cornwall as a miner and, by his own account, was a riotous drunkard but was converted, in 1823, after reading John Bunyan’s ‘Visions of Heaven and Hell’ and became a Bible Christian, an offshoot of the Methodist denomination.  

His exuberant preaching, involving jumping, shouting and singing often inspired his congregation to also spontaneously sing, dance and exclaim ‘Praise the Lord’ also often bursting into tears. 

Bray’s congregations were so great and and his supporters so generous that he was able to fund the building of three new Methodist chapels; in his home village of Twelveheads along with ones at Carharrack and at Kerley Downs.  Never a wealthy man, Bray and his wife often fretted that they and their four children would end up in the workhouse not least because Bray was generous and practical in living life through his beliefs.  Nevertheless, being made aware of two small children whose mother had died and whose father had abandoned them, he and his wife, Joanna, brought them up as their own.

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