Drew was born in Limerick in 1800 and studied at Trinity College Dublin. He was ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland and served as a curate in Antrim and later as the first incumbent of Christ Church in Belfast.
Drew built over 20 low-church style churches and schools in the area and was a fervent member of the Orange Order and a Tory. He opposed Catholic emancipation and high-church Anglicanism, and refused to accept the 1841 census that showed Catholics as the largest denomination in Ireland.
He founded the Christ Church Protestant Association in 1854 and delivered a controversial sermon in 1857 that played a role in a sectarian riot in the City.
He was a fervent abolitionist. He declared the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, the ‘fugutive slave’ who visited Belfast in 1845 as the “is the stone in the sling to over-throw the Goliath of Slavery.” He also chaired meetings at where Douglass spoke on his visit to Belfast. Later, Drew served as rector of Loughinisland and precentor of Down Cathedral. He died in Dublin in 1870 and was buried at Seaforde, Co. Down. A portrait of him is held at the Ulster Museum in Belfast. He and his wife Isabella had twelve children.
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Thomas Drew
