BENSON, Rev. MANLEY

REV. MANLY BENSON, Pastor of Brant Avenue Methodist Church, Brantford, was born in 1842, in Prince Edward County, Ontario. He comes from the old U. E. Loyalist stock, the early founders of Canadian nationality.

To this may be attributed the sturdy mental and moral, as well as physical fibre by which he is characterized. At the early age of ten years Mr. Benson was converted to God at a special service held by the late Joseph Reynolds. He grew up under the fostering influence of the Sabbath school, the class meeting, the public and social means of grace. His parents removed to the Town of Newburg, Ont., where young Manly Benson received a good education at the Academy, and prepared for the work of a teacher. He taught for a few years, at the same time continuing his studies with the Principal of the Academy.

The piety and cultivated taste of the young teacher commended him to the notice of the Methodist Church of the place, and after some training as a local preacher, he was recommended for the Christian ministry. He was received on trial in 1863, travelled for four years as junior preacher on the Romney, Chatham, Windsor and Sarnia Circuits, and was ordained at the Hamilton Conference of 1867.

He was married July 9, 1867, to Julia McCrea, third daughter of the Hon. Walter McCrea, now Judge of Algoma County, Ontario.

He then travelled, as Superintendent, the Ridgetown, Newberry and Cooksville Circuits, and was afterwards invited to the Centenary Church, Hamilton, where he spent three years, and has gone, by invitation, for three years each to Stratford and St., Thomas. Mr. Benson then came to Brantford, June 4, 1881, where he is at present located in charge of the brant Avenue Church.

On every circuit and station on which he laboured. the temporalities as well as the spiritualities of the church have greatly prospered. In 1871, in company with Rev. Dr. Punshon, he crossed the continent, visiting many points of interest in the United States and British Columbia. At a later period he made an extended tour through France, Italy, Switzerland, South-Eastern Germany, Belgium, Great Britain and Ireland. Not content with enjoying the scenes and associations of foreign lands without sharing the enjoyment with others, he has communicated pleasure and profit to delighted audiences in the principal cities and towns of western Canada by his eloquent lectures on many of the places of interest visited by him.

He is also an earnest worker in temperance reform, the Sunday school cause and every good object. Since he left school in his boyhood he has " paddled his own canoe." and is thus, in an emphatic sense, a self-made man. His married life has been blessed with eight children, of whom six are now living- two sons and four daughters.