John Farrar

Who was John Farrar?

Rev. John Farrar was a Methodist minister. He served as Secretary of the annual British Methodist Conference on fourteen occasions, and was twice its elected President. Farrar was tutor and governor of several Wesleyan colleges. These included the early Wesleyan training college at Abney House, near London; and British Methodism's first purpose-built college at Richmond, now Richmond University.

Farrar, third and youngest son of the Rev. John Farrar, a Wesleyan minister, was born at Alnwick, Northumberland, on 29 July 1802. On the opening of Woodhouse Grove School, Yorkshire, for the education of the sons of ministers, on 12 January 1812, he became one of its first pupils. On leaving school, he was employed as a teacher in an academy conducted by Mr. Green at Cottingham, near Hull. In August 1822 he entered the Wesleyan ministry, and spent his four years of probation as second-master in Woodhouse Grove School. He afterwards was resident minister successively at Sheffield, Huddersfield, Macclesfield, and London, until in 1839 he was appointed tutor and governor of Abney House Training College, Stoke Newington, London, the larger part of whose grounds had recently become an arboretum and cemetery, Abney Park Cemetery.