Gideon Ouseley

Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use Irish English Template:Short description Template:Infobox person Gideon Ouseley (24 February 1762 – 13 May 1839)<ref name=Americana>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> was born into an Anglican gentry family in Dunmore, County Galway.<ref name="DMBI">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Biography

His father, although a deist, intended that his son enter the clergy,<ref name=Americana/> but Ouseley spent much of his childhood in the cabins of peasant neighbours.<ref name=Cunningham04>Template:Cite book</ref> He was tutored with his cousins Gore and William, and all three had notable careers.<ref>R. W. Ferrier, ‘Ouseley, Sir Gore, first baronet (1770–1844)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 10 Nov 2011</ref>

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 brawl, a loss that reputedly left him with a frightening appearance,<ref name=Cunningham04/> Ouseley left his wild ways behind him. In 1791 he was converted to Methodism by English soldiers stationed in Dunmore,<ref name=Arthur76>Template:Cite book</ref> and he set out in turn, to convert and reform others. Ouseley preached the gospel, mostly in Ulster, until his death, preaching up to 20 sermons a week.<ref name=Americana/> His knowledge of the Irish language and of peasant mores— not to mention his eccentric preaching astride a white horse— won him renown as Methodism's 'apostle to the Irish'.<ref name=Cunningham04/>

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The writer John Mulvey Ousley was of a later generation of the same family.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

External links

• Gideon Ouseley, From A Compendium of Irish Biography, 1878
• Dun Laoghaire Methodist Church: How it began