Author: TOMES, John
Biography:
TOMES, John (1743-1808: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 1 May 1743 at Hook Norton, near Banbury, Oxfordshire, the son of John Tomes and his wife Jane Parsons, who had married at St. Mary’s, Banbury, on 12 Sept. 1742. Nothing is known of his education but he was almost certainly the Rev. John Tomes, Baptist Minister of Hook Norton, who died on 27 Feb. 1808, aged 65, and was buried on 2 Mar. at Bury Orchard Baptist burial ground, next to St. Peter’s (Anglican). Nothing is known of his ministry and he may have been minister at Hook Norton only in the interregnum 1805-1808 after the death of Benjamin Whitmore, minister from 1754-1804, and before the appointment of Thomas Claypole in 1809. The Baptist community at Hook Norton was small though long-standing and in 1738 consisted of 18 families with a further 28 people from 13 other villages recorded in 1740, so another possibility might be that he assisted Whitmore in the outlying villages. In 1788 they were joint executors of a parishioner’s will. (ancestry.co.uk 29 Apr. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 29 Apr. 2024; Northampton Mercury 19 Mar. 1808; OJ 24 May 1788; “The Baptists in Hook Norton,” hook-norton.org.uk) AA