Frances,
Yes, Charles was a Primitive Methodist minister and I've been trying to contact the historian for the American Methodist church for information about his whereabouts and activities without success. As to your suggestion that the family may have come through Canada, that is doubtful. They lived in Brooklyn from 1852 to about 1863-4 before moving on to Cleveland. The elder Charles died in Brooklyn in 1855.

Like I said, I've just always assumed that they were in England while Charles Wesley received his training to become a minister but there may have been another reason. In Brooklyn and Cleveland he worked as a ship's carpenter as later did his sons and a number of his Manx neighbors in Cleveland. Yet he grew up in Michael and moved to Douglas while probably in his teens. Neither place, as far as I can determine would have provided an opportunity to learn that trade. I've read quite a bit on the skill of Manx shipbuilders in Cleveland, but most of the names come from families prominant in the northern half of the island, suggesting that some shipbuilding was going on up north (Ramsey perhaps?), but not Michael or Douglas. Am I correct about this?

So now I'm exploring the possibility that Charles could have been working as an apprentice ship's carpenter in Liverpool or elsewhere in England during this period.

Greg