Author: Stevens, John
Biography:
STEVENS, John (1776-1847: Memoirs)
He was born on 8 June 1776 at Aldwincle, Northamptonshire, the eldest of ten children of Isaac Stevens, shoemaker, and his wife Elizabeth Everet/Everitt, who had married on 30 Jan. 1776. He was educated at the local village school and went to London at the age of sixteen to work as a shoemaker. He worshipped at the Baptist Chapel in Grafton Street, Euston, London. He returned home after three years and preached his first sermon in his grandfather’s house in Wadenhoe, Northants. He then began a career as a Baptist minister. His father remained a Methodist and later worked as a clerk at the Countess of Huntingdon’s Sion Chapel in Whitechapel, East London. John Stevens married Mary Armstrong, a widow, on 20 Nov. 1797, at St. Giles’s, Holborn. She was also a member of the Grafton Street congregation. She died on 7 Oct. 1818, leaving him with seven children. He then married Alice Dixon/Dickson on 28 Mar. 1820 at St. George’s, Hanover Square, Westminster, with further issue. He was variously Baptist minister at Oundle (1797-99), St. Neot’s (1799-1805)--both Huntingdonshire--Boston, Lincolnshire (1805-11), Grafton Street, Euston, London (1811-13), York Street, St. James’, London (1813-24), and finally for his last 23 years, at Salem Chapel, Meard’s Court, Dean Street, Soho, London (1824-47). He died, aged 71, on 6 Oct. 1847 at Huntley Street, Torrington Square, Bloomsbury, London. In addition to Verses on the Sonship of Christ (1812), listed here, he published a number of separately published sermons and an array of theological works, now completely forgotten but quite well received at the time: Help for the True Disciples of Immanuel (1803), Doctrinal Antinominianism Refuted (1809), A Scriptural Display of the Triune God (1813), The Pleasure of God in the Salvation of His People (1815), The Antiquity of Jesus (1818). A further memoir was announced in a posthumous publication, God’s Heavenly Minister(1859) with the title, The Servant of Christ: A Memoir of Mr. John Stevens, but it does not seem to have been published. (Memoirs of Mr. John Stevens [1848], 1-115; ancestry.co.uk 26 Dec. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 26 Dec. 2023; SJC, 7 Oct. 1847) AA