Joshua Thomas

Joshua Thomas (1719–1797), Particular Baptist minister and historian, was the pastor of the Baptist meeting at Leominster for almost fifty years.  The elder Thomas (his son, Timothy, was pastor at Devonshire Square in London) joined the Baptist meeting in Leominster in 1740, and soon thereafter returned to Wales. He was preaching in Wales by 1743; he was eventually ordained and returned to Leominster in 1753, now as pastor of the church there, a position he maintained until his death in 1797.  He was a noted Baptist historian of Wales, publishing Hanes y Bedyddwyr ymhlith y Cymry (‘A History of the Baptists among the Welsh’) (1778), and his History of the Baptist Association in Wales from ... 1650 (1795). He also left in manuscript several volumes on the History of Baptists and of Christianity in Wales.