Nelson Wellesley Fogarty was born on 13 September 1871 in
Canterbury,
Kent, England, the son of John Evans Fogarty and his wife Mary Ann Mills. He was educated at
The King's School, Canterbury, before entering
St Augustine's Missionary College in 1890. (He was made an Honorary Fellow in 1924.) After achieving a first-class pass in the Preliminary Theological Examination in 1893, he went out to
South Africa, and was licensed as a
catechist in the
parish of
Stellenbosch, in the
Anglican Diocese of Cape Town, on 24 October 1893. He was made
deacon by the
Metropolitan bishop of
Cape Town, William West Jones, on 21 September 1894, and licensed as assistant
curate of St. Saviour's church, Claremont in Cape Town. He moved to
Oudtshoorn in 1895, being licensed as assistant curate of St. Jude's church, Oudtshoorn on 26 March 1895, and serving as acting
chaplain to the Oudtshoorn Volunteer Rifles. He was ordained
priest by William West Jones in
St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town, on 8 March 1896. In 1897, he became
chaplain to the Bishop of
Mashonaland,
William Thomas Gaul, and to the Railway Mission, in what is now the
Church of the Province of Central Africa, and during the
Anglo-Boer War was chaplain to the Southern Rhodesian contingent, being awarded the Queen's South Africa Medal, with two clasps. In 1901, he took up an appointment in Basutoland (
Lesotho), then part of the
Diocese of Bloemfontein, as principal of St Mary's Training College, Thlotse Heights. In 1904, he became Director of the Government Industrial School,
Maseru. He served as a
Canon of
Bloemfontein Cathedral between 1912 and 1920. Having served as a chaplain with the Union Defence Forces in
German South-West Africa during 1915, he was appointed as
Archdeacon of Damaraland and
Vicar-General for the Metropolitan of the
Church of the Province of South Africa in
South-West Africa in 1916. When the missionary
Diocese of Damaraland was formed in 1924, he was chosen to be its first bishop, and consecrated as such in St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town on
Quinquagesima Sunday, 2 March 1924 by the Archbishop of Cape Town, assisted by the Bishops of
George, Bloemfontein, and
St. John's, Kaffraria, as well as the
Coadjutor Bishop of Cape Town, and Bishop Gaul. During his episcopate, St George's Cathedral in
Windhoek was built. He died in Sea Point, Cape Town, on 8 April 1933, aged 61. Fogarty was "described as 'a man of fine physique, more than average good looks and a forceful preacher'. He was friendly and simple-hearted, yet of a forceful character, and often laboured single-handed in remote districts to further the work of the Church" (Boucher). His granddaughter was the illustrator
Pat Fogarty. ==References==