Author: Whitchurch, Samuel
Biography:
WHITCHURCH, Samuel (c. 1755-1817: ancestry.com)
His origins are obscure and his birthdate is based on a calculation from his age at death, but he was probably born at Bath, Somerset, the child of Mary (Davis) and John Whitchurch, who had married there in 1752. In “My Father,” published with Hispaniola (1804), he describes his father as a soldier who had fought at Dettingen and Fontenoy and had died thirty years before. Whitchurch started out in Bath as an ironmonger, brazier, and tin-plate worker. In 1785 he opened his first shop selling metalware items and dispatching workmen as required. In time he branched out as an insurance agent, publishers’ agent, and auctioneer. As he became more prosperous he took on responsible public roles as a member of committees, treasurer or trustee for charities, etc. He was elected Mayor of Bath in 1796 and was active in the founding of the Bath Sunday School Union in 1813. On 6 Sept. 1785 he married Mary Reed (1761-88) at her home parish of St. James, Bristol. They had two children, but she died in 1788 and on 17 Dec. 1789 he married Ann Simpson at Wendron, Cornwall. They had four children together. Whitchurch was a dissenter who attended Bath’s Argyle Chapel, founded in 1783, of which Thomas Tuppen was the first pastor: Whitchurch’s Elegy (1795) pays tribute to him. He was at another Methodist chapel, one founded by the Countess of Huntingdon in 1765, for the ordination of John Marrant, whose account of his religious experience Whitchurch took down in shorthand and wrote up as The Negro Convert (1785). Watkins notes that he was an occasional contributor to the Monthly Magazine. As a general rule, his verse publications aimed to serve the interests of virtue and piety. Reviewers tended to overlook mediocre literary qualities and to praise the good intent, his “humanity and Christian principles” making up for the absence of “soul-inflaming energy” (MR). Whitchurch died at home in Bath on 25 Dec. 1817 and was buried as an Independent on 31 Dec.; his wife Ann died in Bristol on 25 Oct. 1821. (ancestry.com 16 May 2024; findmypast.com 16 May 2024; Stephen Waddell, “William Jay: Evangelical Preacher,” historyofbath.org; Watkins; Bath Chronicle 20 Oct. 1785, 6 Apr. 1786, 13 Oct. 1796, 25 Mar. 1825, 25 Oct. 1821; Cheltenham Chronicle 1 Jan. 1818; Watkins; MR 46 [1805], 438-40) HJ
Other Names:
- S. Whitchurch
- Whitechurch