Author: Russell, Joshua
Biography:
RUSSELL, Joshua (1796-1870: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 4 Mar. 1796 at High Street, Southwark, south London, and registered along with three other siblings on 30 July 1805 at Dr. Williams’s Library, the son of Archibald Campbell Russell, attorney, and Louisa Vaughan, who had married in 1792. He entered St. Paul’s School, London, in 1805 and was then apprenticed in 1812 to his father, who had a practice in Lant Street, Southwark. He later joined his father’s firm as partner. Poems (1819) was printed for the author by F. Mason, High Street, Borough, and dedicated to Sir James Mackintosh. He married Elizabeth Hoby (1794-1825) on 16 Oct. 1822 at St. George’s, Hanover Square, Westminster. They had a daughter and a son. She died on 19 Feb. 1825, probably due to childbirth complications. He then married Jane Ann Russell (1792-1840) on 23 June 1832, at St. Mary’s, Hendon. She ran a ladies’ boarding-school in Mill Hill and may have been distantly related. They had one son. She died in a phaeton accident just outside Taunton, Somerset. They had moved to Melksham, Wiltshire, where he had become a Baptist minister. After her death he moved back to the outskirts of south London, living at Blackheath Hill, where he became an unpaid minister at Lewisham Road Baptist chapel, Greenwich, and served from 1847 until his death. He also worked for the Baptist Missionary Society. His Journal of a Tour in Ceylon and India (1852) records his work as a missionary for them. The Christian Sabbath; The Way of Life; and Other Poems (1853) reflects his later religious concerns and was also printed locally, by W. H. Crockford of Blackheath Road. A further volume, The Coasts of Britain: and Other Poems(1865) was published by the Book Society and is rare with the only known copy at Bodley. He died on 29 Sept. 1870 at his home in Blackheath, and was buried at Nunhead cemetery, where there is still a monumental tomb. He left an estate of around £20,000. (ancestry.co.uk 27 Nov. 2023; Robert Barlow Gardiner, The Admission Registers of St. Paul’s School [1884], 230; Evening Mail 28 Feb. 1825; Patriot 27 June 1832; Taunton Courier 27 May 1840; Morning Post 1 Oct. 1870) AA