Thomas Dixon (nonconformist)

It was once thought that Thomas Dixon might have been the eponymous son of a nonconformist minister who was removed from the vicarage of Kelloe, County Durham in the Great Ejection of 1662. However, more recent studies consider this to be unlikely, although they do say that he was probably the son of an episcopalian. He was born at Ravenstonedale in the county of Westmorland around 1679/80. He married Eleanor Stanger sometime after obtaining a bond to do so on 21 September 1708; she was the daughter of an elder of the Cockermouth Independent Church. ==Nonconformism==

He studied at Manchester under John Chorlton and James Coningham, probably from 1700 to 1704, during which period he was for some time uncertain whether he should follow the path of nonconformism or that of the Church of England. He served briefly in the ministry at Colchester from 1704, but by October 1705 had succeeded Roger Anderton as minister of a dissenting congregation at Whitehaven that had been founded by Irish presbyterians. In 1722 or 1723, Dixon moved to the presbyterian meeting house at Bank Street in Bolton, Lancashire. Some sources say that he did so as the successor to Samuel Bourn, but others note a two-year ministry of Peter Withington between those of Bourn and Dixon. He continued the operation of his academy, which moved with him to Bolton. He also practiced medicine in the town, having been awarded the medical degree of M.D. from King's College, Aberdeen in 1718. Dixon died at his Bank Street manse on 14 August 1729, aged 50, and was buried in his meeting house. A memorial tablet placed there by one of his sons, Richard Dixon, described him as "facile medicorum et theologorum princeps" (easily chief among physicians and theologians). ==See also==