Who Was John Joseph Entwisle?

I am a distant relation of  John Joseph Entwisle. It is worth noting the context of his anti-Catholic views. He came from a very strong and highly active non-conformist family from the north of England. His great uncle was John Pawson, a Wesleyan Methodist Minister and leading light of the church. “A man of deep but simple piety, he is remembered for having in 1796 burnt many of Wesley’s papers and his annotated copy of Shakespeare, which he considered ‘unedifying’.” [i.e. a bit overzealous]. Pawson’s niece, JJE’s grandmother, Mary Pawson, married the Rev. Joseph Entwisle (his grandfather and my forebear), who was a Wesleyan Itinerant and Governor of the Hoxton Theological Institution in London. Rev. Entwisle had been converted by Wesley himself. Hoxton College trained young Wesleyan ministers, many of whom became missionaries in the South Pacific. JJE’s father and three uncles were Protestant ministers (Itinerants). One of his cousins married a famous missionary to Tonga and New Zealand (where there was no love lost with the Catholic missionaries who spend no time educating the people they were converting).  

JJE’s father died when he was a young boy (he had died after tending to a sick neighbor with yellow fever and contracting the disease himself). JJE was placed under the care of his pastor, the Rev. Dr. Breckenridge, a Presbyterian minister of Baltimore (who became Principal of Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania), who said, “I knew this youth perfectly, for about twelve years; indeed he was almost as a son in my house, and was very dear to us all. And I can truly say, I never knew a human being who gave more complete evidences of being born of God.” … “This promising young man died on the 8th of June, 1846, in the 23rd year of his age.”

I hope you will not judge him too harshly, as he was a child of his family, one that sacrificed much to their Protestant duty (and which had no love of the Catholic church). And we are proud to know that he was a graduate of Princeton so long ago (joining contemporary relatives that have been graduates of London, Sydney, and other world-class universities).