William C. Holden

Born: June 30, 1813, Blackburn, Blackburn with Darwen, England, United Kingdom

Died: October 16, 1897 (age 84), Grahamstown, Western District, Eastern Cape, South Africa

William Clifford HOLDEN spent more than 60 years in the Wesleyan Ministry. He was a native of Derbyshire, England, and whilst a youth sought and found the Lord. His conversion was clear, and he lived in the daily consciousness of the Lord’s abiding presence. He was in due time accepted for the Methodist Ministry.

After three years’ service in England he came out to the Cape Colony in the year 1839, and early manifested those characteristics which marked his career. He was untiring in his industry; and, by unintermitting application, he made himself familiar with the History and Customs of the Native Races, and his work in the Native Tribes has taken its place as a standard authority. He was faithful in the discharge of his duties as a minister, carrying the gospel of Christ into new spheres, which at a later date became prosperous Methodist Churches. He was the Pioneer of Methodism in Natal. He was a diligent student of Scriptures, and his sermons were marked by evangelical fervour and spiritual power. He was an active pastor, and numbers living on solitary and remote farms were as carefully visited as residents in towns.

During the years of his retirement, he was still diligent; and, up to the time of his last illness, which was of brief duration, he was one of the chaplains of the Chronic Sick Hospital, Graham’s Town, devoting most of his time to the spiritual well-being of its inmates. He passed peacefully and triumphantly away, on the 14th of October, 1897, in the eighty-fourth year of his age and the sixty-first of his ministry.

From; Minutes of Sixteenth Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of South Africa, 1898