Methodist Class and Band Tickets, 1742-1958 and undated

Extent:

4 boxes, 11 volumes

Scope and content:

Consists mainly of albums of Methodist class and band tickets; also contains many loose tickets and groups of Methodist class papers and books; and research material on these and related topics. The "class meeting" and "class ticket" refer back to the earliest years of Wesley's Methodist societies, with the class paper introduced to record attendance at the meetings and the class tickets distributed to members quarterly. The series contains more than 4000 tickets, most of them mounted in albums or scrapbooks. The volumes vary greatly in size and physical condition, from booklets scarcely larger than the tickets themselves (about 2" x 3"), to large scrapbooks with many items coming loose, to such beautifully-preserved albums as the Joseph G. Wright Class and Band Tickets, 1742-1954.

Though mainly from English churches, there are also multiple examples from other countries, including tickets printed in Welsh, German, and Tamil. In addition to the Wesleyan Methodist church, several other denominations are represented, including the Primitive Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Reform Church, the Wesleyan Reform Union, and the modern unified Methodist Church.

The class papers and books are the records kept by class leaders, who recorded not only attendance but also commented upon the spiritual status and progress of individual members. Also contained in this series are various articles and notes by Baker and other scholars on the class meetings and tickets; this secondary material explains not only the history of such materials but also their possible uses for historical research, including local history, genealogy, administration of the growing church was administrated at the local level. Finally, although by the 19th century the tickets had become entirely textual items, many of the earliest tickets were visually elaborate and contain hundreds of examples of 18th century engraving technique.

Contents

Using These Materials