Author: Newman, Henry Charles Christian
Biography:
NEWMAN, Henry Charles Christian (1756/7-1829: ancestry.co.uk)
Although no record of his baptism has been found, his Westminster and Cambridge records state that he was the son of John Christian Newman of Altona, Germany (Schleswig-Holstein). It is possible he was the son of Johan Christian Newman and his wife Agnet who baptised anotherson, Burchard Carl, at St. Luke’s, Finsbury, on 8 Oct. 1758. He entered Westminster School in 1769 and went up to Trinity College Cambridge in 1774, aged 17 (BA 1778). He was ordained deacon in 1779 and was Vicar of Stotfold, Bedford 1780-1823 but spent his later career mostly in the West Indies. He was Rector of St. John’s, Capisterre, St. Christopher (1807) and Curate at St. George’s, Roseau, Dominica (1809-13), then Rector (1813-29). He was a member of the Assembly and sometime Speaker from 1812. He had probably been sent out by the Church Missionary Society which had been founded in 1799 and was heavily influenced by German theology. In their 1825 Report “on the moral and religious condition of the Negroes,” he claimed to “have baptized 697 children slaves, and 339 adult slaves.” He died at Roseau, aged 74, and was buried at St. George’s on 16 Aug. 1829. He may have married and had issue. A John Henry Newman and his wife bought an estate at Antrim, Dominica, in 1826 and in 1835 received compensation for loss of slaves. The connection is, however, not certain. (ancestry.co.uk 8 Aug. 2021; CCEd 8 Aug. 2021; LBS; G. F. Russell Barker and A. H. Stenning, Records of Old Westminsters [1928] 2: 689; Vere Langford Oliver, More Monumental Inscriptions: Tombstones of the British West Indies [1927, repr. 1993] 7; Evening Mai 5 Jan. 1823, 29 Sept. 1825) AA