Author: Eedes, John
Biography:
EEDES, John (1775-1847: ancestry.co.uk)
He was probably baptised on 30 Dec. 1775, at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, the son of Robert Eedes (1736-98) and his wife Ann House (1750-1827), who had married in 1771. Nothing is known of his education and it seems likely he was apprenticed. For most of his life he worked in London as accountant, printer, stationer, and bookseller. He married Mary Ann Westmacott (1779-1817) on 6 Jan. 1799 at St. Katherine Coleman, City of London, by licence when she was a minor; no parental consent is recorded. They later regularised the marriage on her maturity, exactly two years later on 6 Jan. 1801 at St. George’s, Hanover Square. They went on to have at least six children, with four of them baptised in the eccentric Rev. William Huntington’s (q.v.) proprietary Providence Chapel at Great Titchfield Street, Marylebone, and later at Grays Inn Road. His wife was probably the Mary Ann Eades (sic) who died, aged 38, and was buried on 28 Mar. 1817 at Union Street (Independent), Southwark. He then married Anne Boxall (1787-1825) on 1 Oct. 1818 at St. Andrew’s, Farnham, Surrey. They had two sons and a daughter, all baptised at Huntington’s New Providence Chapel. Anne Eedes died on 8 Apr. 1825 at Farnham, aged 37, and was buried in her family’s church. Eedes wrote a spiritual memoir of her last days, The Testimony of Faith in the Prospect of Death (1825). The work listed here, The Twilight of Sardis (1813), is a response to the death of William Huntington with reflections on the current state of the church. He continued to revere Huntington with further reflections on him and the New Providence Chapel in Colloquial Reflections pertaining to Zion (1819) and a defence of his character in Scriptural Proof (1837). Temperamentally High Calvinist, he also warned against Catholics and Dissenters in two short pamphlets. He died at 14 Little Knight Rider Street, Doctors’ Commons, St. Paul’s, on 2 Feb. 1847 and was buried in St. George’s Hanover Square burial ground at Hyde Park, Westminster, alongside several of his children. His will states that he had lost several thousand pounds during his life and the little he had to dispose of went to three sisters who were still resident in High Wycombe. (ancestry.co.uk 10 Dec. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 10 Dec. 2023; Palladium 11 Apr. 1825; Bell’s Weekly Messenger 8 Feb. 1847) AA