Author: Dent, Samuel
Biography:
DENT, Samuel (fl 1772-93)
The author of An Epistle to a Friend is identified as Samuel Dent in a note on the title page of the CUL copy. Biographical information is sparse but he was baptised as a Quaker on 22 Feb. 1753 in Whitehaven, Cumberland, the son of Mary and Samuel Dent. Nothing is known about his education but he travelled to Barbados in 1772 to take up a ministry in Bridgetown. There he served as the secretary of the Barbados Royal Society and, curiously, became known for his discovery of a durable way of dyeing nankeen. He moved to Grenada where in 1790 and 1793 he met and worked with the Rev. Dr. Thomas Coke, a Methodist missionary, on his travels through the West Indies. Coke recorded that Dent was married with a family but no details have been located. It is not known when he died. (findmypast.co.uk 10 July 2024; Samuel Drew, The Life of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Coke [1817]; William Tullett, Smell in Eighteenth-Century England [2019]; New London Magazine 2 [1785]) SR