Author: Huntington, William
Biography:
HUNTINGTON, William (1745-1813: ODNB)
His title-pages often identify him as “William Huntington, S.S. [Sinner Saved].” This was the persona created by an enterprising man. He was born on 2 Feb. 1745 at Four Wents, a village near Cranbrook, Kent, and baptised “William Hunt” at Cranbrook on 14 Nov. 1750, one of at least six children—himself and five sisters—baptised there between 1733 and 1751 by William Hunt and his wife Elizabeth Butler, who had married in the same church on 16 Feb. 1731. Biographers and historians generally state that his father was in fact a local farmer, Barnabas Russel, who employed Hunt as a labourer; the origins of the story are not clear. After working as a servant, coachman, gardener, coalheaver, etc., and after having a child with a woman he was not able to marry, he left Kent, changed his name to Huntington, and in 1769 married a servant named Mary Short (1743-1806) with whom he had thirteen children, seven of whom survived him. A dramatic conversion experience in 1773 led to a firm conviction that he was predestined to be saved. He became a compelling speaker with growing popularity first on a circuit in the southeast of England and then, from 1783, at a purpose-built chapel in London, Providence Chapel in Great Titchfield St. and its successor (after a fire), the New Providence Chapel off Grays Inn Road. As a preacher he was controversial but fashionable, and grew wealthy through publishing and through the building of subsidiary chapels around the country. After the death of his wife Mary he married the widow of a former Lord Mayor of London, Elizabeth Sanderson, on 15 Aug. 1808; at the time of his death they were living in a grand house on Hermes Hill, Pentonville. He assembled his many pamphlets and sermons in an edition of 20 volumes (1806), with additions published posthumously. He died at Tunbridge Wells on 1 Jul. 1813 and was interred in the burial-ground of the Jireh Chapel at Lewes, Sussex, on 8 Jul. Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of William Huntington, with a portrait, appeared in Aug. 1813. His widow Elizabeth Sanderson, who had continued to go by that name, died in 1817 and was buried at a cottage he had given her near Cranbrook. (ODNB 8 Jul. 2023; findmypast.com 8 Jul. 2023; Sussex Advertiser 30 Aug. 1813, 13 Sept. 1813) HJ