MULKINS, HANNIBAL, Wesleyan Methodist minister and Church of England clergyman; b. in Upper Canada in 1811 or 1812; m. 19 May 1842, Jane Gray Dennis, by whom he had several children; d. 26 July 1877, at Stapleford, Nottinghamshire, Eng.
Hannibal Mulkins was received on trial in the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada in 1835 and was ordained in 1838. From 1835 to early in 1840 he served on the Yonge Street, Toronto Township, Whitby, Cobourg, Belleville, and Brockville circuits. He was described by John Carroll* as “a very gifted young minister.” He was popular and successful, and Carroll mentions that he led “a good revival . . . among the young people” in Brockville. However, in 1840, “taking umbrage at some slight disciplinary proceedings relating to himself,” he went over to the Church of England. According to Carroll, he was a useful minister, who did not fall “into ritualistic folly”and always “exhibited a fraternal feeling towards his early fellow-laborers.”
Mulkins prepared for orders in the Church of England with the Reverend Edward Denroch, clergyman in charge of the parish at Brockville, and the Reverend Henry Caswell, master of the grammar school. Made deacon by Bishop John Strachan* on 25 April 1841, and ordained priest 9 May 1842, he was appointed travelling missionary in Fitzroy and Pakenham, and was reported as itinerating in the area west of Bytown (Ottawa) along the Ottawa River in the townships of Torbolton, Fitzroy, Pakenham, McNab, and Horton and in some unsurveyed territory. On 1 Jan. 1851 he was appointed by Lord Elgin [Bruce*] to the chaplaincy of the Provincial Penitentiary in Kingston in the place of the Reverend Robert Vashon Rogers, with whom he was involved in a proposal in the mid–1850s to have the Reverend Thomas Hincks, brother of Sir Francis*, appointed to the see of Kingston.
During the years 1869–73 Mulkins spent some time acting as agent in England for John Travers Lewis*, bishop of Ontario, to arrange for the: commutation of the grant made to the diocese by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Superannuated from the penitentiary on 1 Nov. 1875, Mulkins left the chaplaincy and emigrated to England. He was appointed curate of Stapleford in the diocese of Salisbury in December 1875, and vicar in 1876.
Hannibal Mulkins was the author of Report to the, Canada Temperance Society on the workings and effects of prohibitory legislation to suppress intemperance in the New England states (Kingston, C.W., 1855). Church (Cobourg; Toronto), 1 May 1841; 1, 29 July 1852; 17 May 1856. Examiner (Toronto), 25 May 1842. Clerical guide and churchman’s directory, an annual register for the clergy and laity of the Anglican Church in British North America, 1876, ed. C. V. F. Bliss (Ottawa, 1876). Cornish, Cyclopædia of Methodism, I, 118. Carroll, Case and his cotemporaries, IV, 259–60. J. L. H. Henderson, “John Strachan as bishop,” unpublished dd thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1956, 603–5.
Cite This Article
James J. Talman, “MULKINS, HANNIBAL,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed November 22, 2024, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mulkins_hannibal_10E.html.
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| Permalink: | https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mulkins_hannibal_10E.html |
| Author of Article: | James J. Talman |
| Title of Article: | MULKINS, HANNIBAL |
| Publication Name: | Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10 |
| Publisher: | University of Toronto/Université Laval |
| Year of publication: | 1972 |
| Year of revision: | 1972 |
| Access Date: | November 22, 2024 |