F. Jewell

F. Jewell was a Methodist biographer whose surviving work records Abraham Lockwood, a Yorkshire local preacher in the Methodist New Connexion. Little Abe follows Lockwood from childhood near Huddersfield through conversion, chapel membership, family life, lay preaching, class leadership, pastoral visiting, and later years. Jewell’s 1880 preface says the narrative drew on people who knew its subject, including ministers T. D. Crothers and W. J. Townsend. The book closely preserves Lockwood’s regional speech, humour, practical illustrations, and reputation among working communities around Berry Brow. A contemporary review by Charles Spurgeon identified Jewell as a reverend and described the volume as an account of a locally prominent preacher. Little Abe is both a devotional biography and a record of nineteenth-century Methodist culture, retaining community memory around a lay religious figure locally.