Gideon Ouseley (24 February 1762 – 13 May 1839) was born into an Anglican gentry family in

Dunmore, County Galway Dunmore () is a town in County Galway, Ireland. It is located on the N83 national secondary road at its junction with the R328 and R360 regional roads. The town belongs to an ancient tuath called Conmhaícne Dúna-Móir and Cenél Dubáin ...

Biography

His father, although a

deist Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin '' deus'', meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation ...

, intended that his son enter the clergy, but Ouseley spent much of his

childhood A child (plural, : children) is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers ...

in the cabins of peasant neighbours. He was tutored with his cousins Gore and

William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

, and all three had notable careers. Married at age 20, Ouseley led a wild life that dissipated both his own and his wife's fortunes. After losing an eye when shot in a

tavern A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food such as different types of roast meats and cheese, and (mostly historically) where travelers would receive lodging. An inn is a tavern t ...

brawl, a loss that reputedly left him with a frightening appearance, Ouseley left his wild ways behind him. In 1791 he was converted to

Methodism Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's br ...

by English soldiers stationed in Dunmore, and he set out in turn, to convert and reform others. Ouseley preached the gospel, mostly in

Ulster Ulster (; ga, Ulaidh or ''Cúige Uladh'' ; sco, label= Ulster Scots, Ulstèr or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional Irish provinces. It is made up of nine counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kin ...

, until his death, preaching up to 20 sermons a week. His knowledge of the

Irish language Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...

and of

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasant ...

mores— not to mention his eccentric preaching astride a

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White o ...

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million yea ...

— won him renown as Methodism's 'apostle to the Irish'.

Works

*''A Short Defence Of The Old Religion'' (1812
2nd Ed. 1829
*''Rare discoveries'' (1823)
''Old Christianity''
(1827)
''Four letters''
(1829) Oliver St. John Gogarty wrote an autobiographical novel ''Tumbling in the Hay'' and two plays under the pseudonym Gideon Ouseley, ''A Serious Thing'' and ''The Enchanted Trousers''. The writer John Mulvey Ousley was of a later generation of the same family.

Notes

External links

Gideon Ouseley, From A Compendium of Irish Biography, 1878Dun Laoghaire Methodist Church: How it began
1762 births 1839 deaths People from County Galway Irish Methodists 18th-century Anglo-Irish people 19th-century Anglo-Irish people Converts to Methodism from Anglicanism {{christianity-bio-stub