Author: Luckock, Benjamin
Biography:
LUCKOCK, Benjamin (1792-1846: ancestry.co.uk
He was born on 14 Apr. 1792 at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, to Quaker parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Luckock. His mother’s maiden name is not known. At his death, he was styled “MA” but there is no record of him at Oxford or Cambridge and his ordination papers give him only as “literate.” He may have been awarded an MA later by a Scottish university. He married Isabella Margaret Boxall on 25 Sept. 1821 at Wellington, Shropshire. He had been ordained deacon in Aug. 1821 and priest in Dec. 1821 although he seems to have had strong Methodist leanings. In 1823 he applied to the Society for the Conversion and Religious Instruction and Education of the Negro Slaves in the British West Indies (Conversion Society) for missionary work. He and his wife embarked for Montserrat, West Indies, where he had been appointed rector of St. Anthony’s, then Rural Dean, and would later become a member of the Council of the island. He undertook missionary work on a number of other islands, including St. Kitts, Nevis, and Antigua. They had a daughter born in Montserrat in 1823. His wife died on 22 Mar. 1831 at Montserrat, and he moved to St. John’s, Antigua, where he gave a sermon, The Terrors of the Storm (1831), and then to St. Croix, Virgin Islands, where he was appointed rector of St. John’s and St. Paul’s, Fredericksted. He married Louisa Augusta Krause (1797-1878) on 9 June 1834 at St. Croix. They had a son born in 1839. In 1841, ill health forced him to return to England. He died on 13 Jan. 1846 at 13 Dorchester Place, London. His Jamaica: Enslaved and Free (1846) was published posthumously by the Religious Tract Society, and contained short chapters on “Negro Character,” “Demoralising Effects of Slavery,” “Abolition of the Slave Trade,” “Missionary Labours,” “Emancipation and Apprenticeship,” and “Freedom.” (ancestry.co.uk 26 Dec. 2022; Aris’s Birmingham Gazette 30 May 1831, 1 Dec. 1834, 19 Jan. 1846; GM Mar. 1846, 327; Conversion Society annual reports 1824-33) AA