Author: Gravener, Thomas
Biography:
GRAVENER, Thomas (1777-1849: ancestry.co.uk)
Although no details of his birth or baptism have been traced, his marriage parish of 1799 was Deal, Kent. The title page of Leviathan Drawn Out; Or, A Description of Satan’s Devices (1832) states that he was “Minister of the Gospel at Jireh Chapel” which was at Lewes, Sussex, and was influenced by the eccentric “sinner saved” William Huntington (q.v.) who was also buried there. Gravener may have earlier lived in a domestic capacity with Huntington in London. Leviathan also contained “A Sacred Elegy on the Death of W. J. Brooke” (q.v.)-- another Huntington-influenced preacher who died at Brighton on 28 Sept. 1811. A further poem and letter were printed posthumously in the Spiritual Magazine. And Zion’s Casket (June 1849, 186-8). He was therefore almost certainly the Thomas Gravener who died, aged 72, at 2 Garden Row, London Road, Southwark, Surrey (now south London), on 11 Feb. 1849, with Sarah Gravener registering his death. The 1841 census records him at the same address, with his occupation given as “Travelling Preacher.” His wife, Sarah, and two children (Sarah, a dressmaker, and Ebenezer, a coach painter) are also recorded. The daughter was registered at William Huntington’s Providence Chapel, Gray Inn’s Lane, London, in 1811; the son at Dr. Williams’s Library in 1822 in an entry which also reveals his mother’s maiden name. Both children were born in Somers Town, King’s Cross, London. Thomas Gravener married Sarah Summers on 2 Dec. 1799 at her parish of St. Lawrence in Thanet, Kent. She died in 1855. (ancestry.co.uk 25 Sept. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 25 Sept. 2023; Earthen Vessel 1 June 1858, 141) AA