Author: Baker, William Richard
Biography:
BAKER, William Richard (198-1861: Edmunds)
He was born on 3 Sept. 1798 at Waltham Holy Cross, Essex, the eldest of eight children of William Baker and his wife Sarah Curtis, who married at Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, on 7 Nov. 1797. For reasons unknown, they subsequently registered his birth at Dr. Williams’s on 6 Oct. 1815 along with his younger sister, Eliza, who later wrote (as Eliza Edmunds) The Life and Memorials (1865) which gives the fullest account of his life. Only he, his sister, and a younger brother survived into adulthood. He was educated at Ashburton Grammar School, Devon, and an academy at Witham, Essex. He originally intended to study law but religious experience led him to train at the Dissenting Academy at Wymondley, Herts. (1819-21). He was recommended by the academy to the Home Missionary Society and took up a post as their representative on the Isle of Man at Ramsay. He married Jane Ormiston on 25 May 1824 at Maughold, Isle of Man. They had at least six children. They lived at Ayr Cottage, Kirk Bride, where he advertised for pupils in 1826, but he left soon afterwards to become Congregational Minister at Shepton Mallet, Somerset, where he remained for over ten years. He published The Curse of Great Britain (1838) and Intemperance The Idolatry of Britain (1839) and became Honorary Secretary to the British and Foreign Temperance Society in 1838. He was briefly minister at Stratford-le-Bow and was also active as itinerant preacher. He was minister at Portland Street Chapel, St. John’s Wood, London, from about 1839 and remained for ten years. He added teaching to most of his ministries and was active in local schools. In 1849 he purchased land at Annerley, Surrey, and built Annerley Lodge, to which he retired and where he produced an array of well received theological works: Our State Church (1850), Free Thoughts on Men and Things (1851), Anti-Mysticism (1855). In 1860, in ill-health, he moved to Down House, Banstead, Surrey, where he died on 29 Sept. 1861. In addition to the work listed here he also published Original Poems (1847); his sister included some of his early schoolboy verse in Life and Memorials. (Mrs. E. L. Edmunds, Life and Memorials of the Late Rev. W. R. Baker [1865]; ancestry.co.uk 16 Aug. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 16 Aug. 2022; Gore’s Liverpool General Advertiser 13 Apr. 1826; Patriot 21 May 1838, 10 Oct. 1861; Johnson, item 43) AA