Author: Stennett, Samuel
Biography:
STENNETT, Samuel (1780-1841: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 28 July 1780 at St. Martin Le Grand, City of London, the eldest son of Benjamin Ridley Stennett (1752-1803) and his wife Sarah Roberts (1760-1823), who had married in Holborn in 1779. As Baptists, they registered his birth at Dr. Williams’ Library, Redcross Street, Cripplegate, on 16 Sept. 1782. He trained for the Baptist ministry at Bristol Baptist Academy (1799-1802). He married Margaret Holbrooke on 26 July 1805 at Oswestry, Shropshire. They had three sons and a daughter. In 1811 he was listed as a private teacher at their home, 6 Baches Row, City Road, Clerkenwell. He became Travelling Agent of the Continental Missionary Society in 1825 and also lectured in London on the degeneracy of European churches. He wrote a memoir of the missionary William Ward (q.v.) which contained an appendix of Ward's poems, with an accompanying "Monody" by Stennett. His eldest son, Benjamin Ridley Stennett, died in Java in 1838 and may also have been a missionary. He died on 3 May 1841, aged 61. After his death his wife, in financial difficulty, let furnished apartments in their house at 6 Wells Street, Grays Inn Road, Clerkenwell. He is sometimes confused with another Baptist minister and writer (to whom he was almost certainly related), Samuel Stennett (1727-1795) who took over the Baptist chapel in Little Wild Street in 1758. (ancestry.co.uk 29 Aug. 2021; Morning Herald 14 May 1825; Patriot 11 June 1838, 10 May and 11 Oct. 1841) AA