About the Inghamites - written by Iain Kerr in April 2000 The Inghamites were an obscure Calvinist non-conformist sect that broke away from the Moravian Church, another non-conformist sect which flourished in northern England during the mid to late 19th century. Benjamin Ingham was born at Ossett, near Leeds, in 1712. He joined the Methodists while at Oxford and was ordained in 1735. He went with Wesley to Georgia; spending 13 months there. he then visited the Moravian Settlement at Herrnhut in Germany. On his return he became Vicar of Ossett and preached in the area between Halifax and Leeds until prohibited from church pulpits in the Diocese of York. He continued in close contact with the Moravians and founded 50 small societies. In 1741, he married Lady Margaret Hastings, sister in law of the Countess of Huntingdon (herself the founder of another sect). In 1742, he joined the Moravians, taking most of his societies with him. In 1753, he severed his connection with the Moravians and the following year set up a new organization whose discipline was based on that of the Moravians but was less strict. In 1755 there were at least 80 societies, mostly in Yorkshire and Lancashire. The Inghamites made a formal break with the Anglican Church in 1755 (25 years before the Countess of Huntingdon's and 34 years before the Methodists made their break) and started to ordain its own preachers. But from 1760, the Inghamites began to break up; some joined with a similar sect based in Scotland, the Sandemanians; some joined the methodists and a few remained loyal to Ingham. After his death in 1772, new societies continued to be founded, while others expired. In 1814, after a year of debate, the remaining 13 Inghamite societies (with 252 members) were united with the Scottish Daleites, a similarly Calvinist group with 15 societies and 512 members. In 1837, an Inghamite church was founded at Farringdon, Ontario in Canada. After that growth, the societies started to decline in numbers and strength. By the 1960s, there were only seven left; in Colne, Wheatley, Winewall and Cotton Tree in Lancashire; at Kendal in Westmorland; at Salterforth in Yorkshire and in Farringdon, Ontario. There are some Inghamite Birth, Marriage and Death Registers in the PRO Kew, Surrey, but there was no central control, so the collection is somewhat mixed. The registers were treated as the private property of the minister which he took with him when he moved to a new appointment.

Year of birth from database of Alan Freer on World Connect