Author: Jefferson, Joseph
Biography:
JEFFERSON, Joseph (1766-1824: Evangelical Magazine)
He was born on 28 Oct. 1766 at Woodside, Wigton, Cumberland, but his parentage cannot be established with certainty. He was educated at the local grammar school until he was eighteen. He then opened a school at Whins in 1784 before being appointed to the Mastership of the Free School at Bothel in June 1785. Originally destined for the Established Church, he was led by religious and mental conflict “to reveal his distress to a pious Dissenting neighbour” in 1787. He attended meetings of Dissenters in Cockermouth and eventually resigned from Bothel school in 1789. With the recommendation of his pastor, Rev. Henry Townsend, he received assistance to study as a Divinity student at Homerton College, London, 1789-91. He then received an invitation in July 1791 to become the Minister at the Independent Chapel, Basingstoke. His appointment was confirmed in a new meeting-house in 1801. He became increasingly evangelical and had links to the London Missionary Society and the Bible Society. This may have brought him into conflict with his congregation and in 1819 he received an invitation from the Independent Chapel at Thirsk, Yorkshire, where he remained until his death. He married Jane Brown on 3 Aug. 1801 at the Chapel in Cockermouth. They had five sons and a daughter, all baptised at Basingstoke. He died on 12 June 1824, aged 58, at Thirsk, leaving several thousand pounds to his wife and children. She died at Cockermouth the following year. In addition to the work listed here, he wrote a short poem, The Ruins of a Temple; A Poem. To which is prefixed, An Account of the Antiquity and History of Holy-Ghost-Chapel, Basingstoke (London [1793]), with a second edition appearing in 1808. He also wrote a biography of fellow Dissenting clergyman, John Savage: The Young Evangelist Exemplified (1799). He contributed to the Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle under the signatures Iota, Erastus, and J. J. He was also an accomplished Hebraic and Oriental scholar and collector of manuscripts. (ancestry.co.uk 22 May 2022; findmypast.co.uk 22 May 2022; Evangelical Magazine n.s. 3 [Jan. 1825], 1-7; Jollie’s Cumberland Guide and Directory [1811], 122-3; Carlisle Journal 22 Aug. 1801; Durham County Advertiser 10 July 1824; Durham Chronicle 17 Sept. 1825; John Whitridge, Memoirs and Remains of Joseph Brown Jefferson [1826], 1-19) AA
Other Names:
- the Rev. Joseph Jefferson