Ruth Minton Taylor

Name ID 2007

See also

Nettelbeck, David A history of Arusha School, Tanzania
Page Number: 79

APPENDIX M TRIBUTE TO RT. REV. WILLIAM WYNN-JONES.

The Diocesan Council places on record its thankfulness to Almighty God for the life and ministry of the Right Rev. William Wynn-Jones M.A, Second Bishop of Central Tanganyika, born at Swansea, Wales in 1900. He went to Australia as a young man and took his M.A. at Sydney. He was on the Staff of Trinity Grammar School, Dulwich Hill when he was ordained in 1925- He came to the newly formed Diocese of Central Tanganyika in 1928 and soon after arrival. was appointed Principal of the C.M.S. Huron Teachers Training College, Kongwa and District Superintendent, Kongwa/Mpapwa.

From his earliest days he had a great sympathy with and burden for the down and out and lonely Africans, town stiffs and jail birds, and sometimes took them. on as houseboys simply to help them. He wrote "Barua za Msafiri" dealing with the problems that young men away from home would have to face. It had a wide sale.

In 1950 he was appointed Education Secretary which gave him contact with the Department at Dar es Salaam. In 1933, he married Ruth Minton Taylor, a mistress at the Mvumi Girls School who came out in 1931 and throughout the years that followed she was his devoted helpmate, who with their own 4 children to look after, nevertheless had a great care for the Europeans and Africans among whom she and her husband worked.

When the Arusha school was planned, the Governor, Sir Stewart Symes, especially asked for Mr. Wynn-Jones as first Headmaster, which position he took when the school was, opened in 1933. For the next 10 years he exercised a wide influence over European children and parents but his love and care for Africans never waned. In 1934 through a bequest from an African, Jackson,, whom. he helped during his final illness, he opened Jackson House at Arusha as a hostel. for passing Africans. In 1939 he was appointed Chancellor of the Diocese.

In the 1939-45 was he was Chaplain to the forces and he had a never-ending care for soldiers wherever he met them. He would take services in 3rd class carriages as he travelled on the railways and might often be seen with his head bowed in prayer with an African soldier just wherever they happened to have met. In 1943 he was consecrated as first Assistant Bishop and as such travelled widely among troops in North Africa and Palestine. On return from his consecration by the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was appointed District Superintendent Mvumi. In 1945, he was appointed Vicar General and in 1947 second Bishop of Central Tanganyika on the retirement of the Right Rev. G .A. Chambers D.D.

During his short episcopate perhaps his greatest single pre-occupation was the development of a ministry to the Groundnut Scheme workers - both black and white at Kanwgwa and Urambo, and his final illness was precipitated by his getting up from bed with a broken arm to open the Church built by the Europeans at Kongwa. He died at Dar es Salaam on the 29th of May, 1950.

He will be remembered outstandingly as one to whom to a superlative degree people mattered and whether at home or travelling in his own diocese or visiting an adjacent Diocese and whether in mud or grass huts, out in the bush, or on the mountains or whether in trains or on the back streets of the big town, he was. ever seeking and saving that which was lost.

Extract ID: 4958
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