Following his death in 1853, the following year a memoir by John Jenkyn Brown (d 1907) appeared in The October edition of The Baptist Magazine.
MEMOIR OF THE LATE REV. MICAH THOMAS, OF ABERGAVENNY.
BY THE REV. JOHN JENKYN BROWN.
It is natural that we should hold in grateful remembrance the benefactors of our race. Almost every city has some son whom it delights to honour and every country some patriot whose life and actions it loves to record. The annals of the Christian church present us with a cloud of witnesses whose examples constitute a rich heritage and in whose steps we are to follow. The long period over which his ministrations extended, the varied and important services which he rendered and the wide and lasting influence which he exercised over the prosperity of the baptist denomination in South Wales entitle the late Rev Micah Thomas to an honoured and affectionate place in the memory of the church of Christ.
The subject of this brief sketch born in the parish of Whitstone in the county of Monmouth on the 19th February 1778. His parents were of the class called yeomen. Of his early life but few particulars have been preserved; and his history during the first twenty-three years may be compressed into a few sentences It would appear that in the town of Usk and in the neighbouring hamlet of Glascoed there were many who held baptist sentiments and among these scattered followers of the Saviour he seems to have first experienced the power of divine truth. He himself gratefully records that when he was seventeen years of age he was baptized at the Glascoed church and subsequently united in fellowship with the church at Penygarn near Pontypool. In about a year and a half afterwards he was called upon to exercise his gifts as a minister and was much engaged in preaching in the neighbouring churches.
In his twenty third year he entered Bristol College then under the presidency of Dr Ryland. The tutor and student were of congenial dispositions and though his stay in college was but short the intimacy there formed ripened into a friendship which terminated only by the death of the former and which doubtless has been renewed by the removal of the latter to the society of the blessed.
While at Bristol College Mr Thomas accepted an invitation to the pastoral office at Ryeford in the county of Hereford. In September 1802 the relation thus entered into was recognised by a public service on which occasion Dr Ryland delivered the charge to the pastor from John xii 26. In this place he laboured with honour and success for six years whence in 1807 he removed to Abergavenny.
This town situated in one of most lovely valleys in Monmouthshire, watered by the crystal stream of the Usk and surrounded by the most striking and picturesque hills, Thomas was wont to visit when sustaining the office of pastor at Ryeford. In this neighbourhood resided a family, whose ancestors had been among the most influential and honoured in the baptist community and whose names are still fragrant among the churches, and whose descendants remain true to their principles and illustrate their virtues. Into this congenial circle Thomas was introduced and in Mrs John Harris of Govilon he found a kindred spirit. As women were ministers to the Redeemer and were fellow helpers to Paul so this Christian lady exercised not a little influence upon the life and labours of our departed friend. At this period there was no baptist church at Abergavenny though there was preaching in the Welsh language and occasionally in English in connection with the church at Llanwenarth. Mr and Mrs Harris appear often to have communed on the interests of the Redeemer's kingdom; to her he seems have suggested the idea of a college and into his views she most heartily and zealously entered. The result was that he removed to Abergavenny to undertake the pastorate of a church yet to be formed and the presidency of a yet to be established college. The residence of Mr Thomas at Ryeford was a season of preparation and there is evidence that by giving himself to reading he availed himself of its advantages; but this town was his real field of labour and for forty-seven years with unwearied perseverance and constancy he pursued his course.
