The principal source for the years 1775 to 1800 of The Dissenting Church of Christ at St. John's 1775 - 1975 (St. John's, 1975), the history of the congregation of St. David's Presbyterian Church, is the church book, a volume begun when the congregation was a society of dissenters. The volume survived the Great Fire of 1892 when the congregation's second and third places of worship, the second meeting house on Victoria Street (by 1892 known as Temperance Hall) and the Stone Chapel, on Queen's Road, burnt down. It had been taken to the Monkstown Road home of the Rev. and Mrs. G.Ward Siddall because Mrs. Siddall had been preparing a pamphlet The Origin of Nonconformity in St. John's, Newfoundland.⁽¹⁾ In the early 1960's the volume was rebound at the National Archives, Ottawa, where it had been taken by Professor G.O. Rothney of the Department of History, Memorial University. A microfilm copy was retained there and a second copy, sent to the Kirk Session of the congregation, was presented to the Provincial Archives in St. John's. (Public Archives of Newfoundland, Parish Records, Reel 41)

The volume, titled on the first page Notes concerning the Dissenting Church of Christ at St. John's Newfoundland, is known to the congregation as The Journal of John Jones, and was probably begun by John Jones, the first minister of the congregation, in 1780, the year of his first recorded baptism. A partial transcription is available in the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Memorial University,⁽²⁾ and a few pages have been published.⁽³⁾ The following partial transcription of the volume covers the period 1775 to 1801. It includes the narrative describing why John Jones came to St. John's, how the small society overcame the many difficulties encountered in building their first meeting house and in being accepted as a legitimate worshipping body, the correspondence between John Jones and James O'Donel, the correspondence from England during the immmense undertaking of the building of the second meeting house, a record of a disputeo, or case of discipline, when the wife of the High Sheriff was accused of pride, carnality and implacability, and the correspondence when the search for a new minister began. In total there are thirty four letters from England, sixteen of them from Poole. The baptismal record from 1780 to 1800 and the Church Articles are included in the Appendices. The remainder of the Journal, which has many blank pages, is an intermittent record of church business, including a list of members from 1810 to 1843, the trust deed for Quidi Vidi Church and some baptismal, marriage and death records. The final entry is dated 1857.

The volume itself is bound in suede with tooling on the spine. It measures 14 by 10 inches and has had inserted in the centre of the cover an additional piece of red leather 4 inches square, inscribed CONGREGATIONAL/ CHURCH/ SAINT/ JOHN'S/ NEWFOUNDLAND/ INSTITUTED/ 1775/ JOHN JONES/ PASTOR. It contains 402 numbered pages. But the volume was probably not in this condition when John Jones began to write in it. Pages 1 to 126 which are included in this transcription and which begin with the narrative of the early life of John Jones and end in 1801, bear the watermarks of Thomas French, a papermaker in Kent, England, from 1775 to 1795 and an unidentified fleur de lys watermark. Pages 236 to 240, the Articles, and pages 363 to 364, the baptismal record, 1780 to 1800, bear similar watermarks. Interspersed throughout the rest of the volume are pages bearing the watermarks of two other papermakers from Kent, Phipps and Son and James Whatman. As some of these watermarks bear the dates 1808 and 1810, the volume has had to be bound in its present form after 1810.⁽⁴⁾

In the eighteenth century Congregational was defined as a word used of those Christians who held every congregation to be a separate and independent church. Such a worshipping body, gathered, as distinct from the parish church which included all parish inhabitants, shared a Calvinistic doctrinal inheritance with Presbyterians, but, believing itself autonomous and independent, claimed the right to appoint and dismiss its own pastors and elders. It regarded itself as following in the apostolic tradition, with Christ as the head of the church, not overseen by any episcopal or presbyterial authority. The preaching of the word of God was of paramount importance and the two sacraments were those of infant baptism and the Lord's Supper, administered monthly. Discipline was practised. It was a common feature of a worshipping body or society organised on Congregational principles to keep a church book or historical register.⁽⁵⁾

The term Congregational is not one which John Jones is known to have used, and probably the red leather insert on the cover of the volume bearing the words Congregational Church was added after his death when the volume was bound. The title on the first page is Notes on the Dissenting Church of Christ. John Jones refers to himself as a Dissenting preacher (page 31) and his congregation as Protestant Dissenters (page 29) or as a Society of Dissenters (page 28). It was as the Dissenting minister that he addressed Governors King and Waldegrave in 1792 and 1797. Although John Jones did not use the term Independent either, this term had become synonymous with Congregational, so that Samuel Greatheed begins his memoir of John Jones⁽⁶⁾ by describing him as pastor of an Independent Church of Christ and Edmund Violet also describes him as pastor of the Independent Church.⁽⁷⁾ The committee established after the death of John Jones described the church as being upon the Independent or Congregational plan(p.121). In 1817, the minister of the Anglican church, the Rev. David Rowland, made reference to the Independent Meeting.⁽⁸⁾ However, it was as pastor of the Dissenting Church that John Jones signed his will in 1799 and the inscription on the gravestone ordered from England was to read first minister of the Dissenting Church of Christ. Edmund Violet in 1807, John Sanderson in 1811 and William James Hyde in 1813, all referred to themselves as pastors of the Dissenting Church.⁽⁹⁾ The new baptismal register, begun in 1816, was printed to read Protestant Dissenting Churchfor each baptismal entry.

The term dissenting was first used to describe the seven members of the Westminster Assembly, convened by Parliament during the Civil War in 1643 to reform the church, who did not wish to follow the Presbyterian majority in establishing a Presbyterian church, but preferred a congregationall government.⁽¹⁰⁾ In 1662, after the restoration of the monarchy, the term was applied generally to describe those, principally Presbyterian, Baptists and Congregationalists, who refused to declare their unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the book entitled the Book of Common Prayer, in accordance with the Act of Uniformity, given royal assent 19 May 1662.⁽¹¹⁾ With the accession of William and Mary and the passing of the Toleration Act exempting their Majesties' Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penalties of Certain Laws given royal asent 24 May 1689, all orthodox Protestants were granted freedom of religion.⁽¹²⁾ But the Five Mile Act, the Corporation Act and the Test Act were not repealed. Dissenters had no share in political office at a local or national level, unless by taking communion according to the Anglican rite. In 1711 an Act to forbid occasional conformity was passed and it was the death of Queen Anne on the very day on which the Schism Act was due to come into force, which saved dissenters being prevented from having their children educated by dissenters. Because the Universities were closed to them, Dissenting Academies were established. Meeting houses had to be registered and the ministers had to be licenced, a proceedure involving taking the oaths of Allegiance, Supremacy and Abjuration and making a Declaration against Transubstantiation. After the marriage act of 1753 only Anglican marriages were valid and if a meeting house did not have its own burial ground only the Anglican minister could officiate at a burial.

There are references to dissenters in Newfoundland: reports of separatists banished into Newfoundland in the Elizabethan period, the possible preaching of George Downing, one of the first graduates of Harvard, to dissenters in Newfoundland in 1645, the visit of the Rev. Blinman in 1660, of the Quakers Esther Fisher and Mary Biddle, and other references to Quakers particularly in Trinity and Placentia.⁽¹³⁾ The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionary, the Rev. Edward Langman, referred to a dissenting party and to several families of the dissenting opinion in this place,⁽¹⁴⁾ yet it was a very small dissenting society, only six in number, which met with John Jones in 1775. The doctrine they professed was based on the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith, approved by Parliament in 1646 and adopted by the Presbyterian Assembly in Scotland in 1649. Because the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order, drawn up by Congregational messengers (the Faith followed closely the Westminster Confession, while the Order was Congregational, stressing the complete autonomy of the congregation), was not produced until 1658, after the death of Oliver Cromwell, it was not used. The Articles, drawn up by the small society for their own government in 1781, to replace earlier ones of which there is no record, were regarded as a covenant, containing the discipline necessary for the preservation of order and purity. Those who signed it, having come out from among them that fear not God, became part of the Fellowship of the Saints. [Appendix C]

John Jones begins his narrative with only a brief reference to his early life, relating that he was brought up according to the principles of dissenters from a humble background. It has to be assumed that John Jones wrote the early narrative, for no-one else in the small society would have written of his henious sins or his natural wicked disposition which exceeded most peoples. Samuel Greatheed relates that his mother was a pious dissenter, that John Jones wasted his youth in idleness and that his year of birth was 1735.⁽¹⁵⁾ Edmund Violet, writing in 1810 for friends who well remembered the circumstances of John Jones' death, also gave his date of birth as 1735, adding the information that John Jones was born in Wales and that his father died at an early age before John Jones had begun any education.⁽¹⁶⁾ The instructions for the tombstone ordered from England in 1801 listed his age as 63, implying his year of birth to have been 1737. John Jones himself relates that he enlisted in the Royal Regiment of Artillery in 1757 when about Twenty years of age. In October 1757 a John Jones was recruited to the Royal Artillery who was born at Preston, Herefordshire.⁽¹⁷⁾ It can only be speculated whether the baptism of a John, son of John and Joan Jones on February 24 1739/40 at Preston-on-Wye, Herefordshire, on the Welsh border, was his own, and whether the Joan Jones, widow, who remarried in 1753, was his mother.⁽¹⁸⁾

When John Jones enlisted in the Royal Artillery in 1757, it was two years after the beginning of the Seven Years War between Great Britain and France. In 1758 he served as a matross, an assistant to the gunner, with Captain Charles Brome's Company in Halifax and Louisburg. Having been promoted to gunner, he served in operations against Martinique in 1762, the year that Signal Hill was captured by the French.⁽¹⁹⁾ The Treaty of Paris in 1763 brought the war to an end but the vulnerability of the defences of St. John's had been revealed and in 1765 John Jones arrived in St. John's as a gunner with the Company of Captain Griffith Williams. He remained in St. John's until 1773, having a spiritual experience in 1770, the same year he heard Laurence Coughlan, the Methodist missionary, preach and with whom he corresponded. It was on the voyage back to St. John's for his second period of service from 1775 to 1778, that he began to pray and read sermons in public.

It must have been shortly after the first meeting house was built that John Stretton, the Harbour Grace merchant who was responsible for bringing Laurence Coughlan to Newfoundland, wrote to Mrs. Eliza Bennis in 1777:

Last spring Brother Thomey and I, went to St. John's, which lies about fourteen leagues from us; and there found Brethren; one of whom preaches; the society only eight persons, very poor; and yet they have built a neat little meet ing house! to the admiration of even the reprobate world; we tarried with them a few days; they are Calvinists, but have the genuine mark of love; and wherever that is met with, we should joyfully give the right hand of friendship ...(20)

The following year John Stretton gave similar information to Mrs. Bennis:

In St. John's a few soldiers and servants joined themselves in society, and though few and very poor, have built themselves a neat meeting house; we visited these also, their society prospers; they are Calvinists, but live the life of faith, and love is even manifest in their faces.(21)

This was written on December 2 1778, after John Jones had returned to England with his Regiment. Two days earlier the Rev. Edward Langman, Church of England clergyman and missionary of the S.P.G., wrote his opinion of John Jones to the secretary of the Society:

About four years since, a common soldier started up and pretended to be Indowed with great gifts of the Spirit: And set up for a Methodist preacher; At first, He drew a good number of poor, ignorant illiterate people after him, pret ending to extraordinary talents; But soon after, being but very little taken notice of by the common, the better and more knowing Sort of people, his followers by degrees lessened, and He is now relieved, and sent as an invalid toPlymouth: And the peopl e in general here, are nothing or but very littleaffected with such pretenders.(22)

It was the unanimous request of the society in St. John's for the return of John Jones as their pastor which resulted in his discharge from the Royal Artillery and his third and final return to St. John's in 1779 as an ordained minister. John Jones did not receive his release from the Royal Artillery until June 1779, the same month he returned to Newfoundland. There is no evidence to suggest he attended an academy or received any formal education, though he probably received some instruction from the Rev. Christopher Mends, pastor of the Batter Street Church of Christ at Plymouth, where the company was stationed. Christopher Mends was one of nine ministers who signed his ordination certificate. Of these nine, four are known to have studied at dissenting academies, one was the principal of an academy and another became a classical tutor at an academy. One of the nine, Edward Ashburner, whose father had been a rope-maker, probably received the same kind of education as that of John Jones, perhaps at a charity school. He spent about six years studying before becoming the minister of the Independent church at Poole. But of John Jones Edmund Violet wrote:

... Mr. Jones was not only not a scholar ... he had not even acquired knowledge of what is usually deemed necessary to fit a man for that situation. He knew nothing of Hebrew, Greek or Latin, and of the English language he had not acquired more than a knowledge of its Rudiments. As to Philology, Antiquities, Natural and Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics, he knew them not.(23)

Despite his own lack of formal education, John Jones showed his strong feelings for the value of education by his establishment of a school attached to the meeting house, where he taught until his last years. His collection of books was the highest priced item in the inventory taken after his death. Samuel Greatheed described, from his own experience, what John Jones offered from the pulpit.

Without the recommendation of learning or eloquence, his addresses from the pulpit were highly instructive and impressive, the subjects of them being usually adopted from the closest attention to the state of his hearers' minds, and their delivery being marked with genuine humility, profound seriousness, and fervent affection. The preacher often seconded his admonitions with tears, and drew them from the eyes of his audience.(24)

Six months after the arrival of John Jones in St. John's as the ordained pastor of the society, the Rev. Edward Langman wrote of him again to the S.P.G.:

That common Soldier .... returned again here this last Spring and presented a Memorial, that He was Ordain'd at Plymouth by a company of dissenting Ministers, and was advised to come here to [seek] for a toleration from the Just ices at the Quarter Sessions, and to have leave to preach, and hold a dissenting Meeting in St. John's; And likewise prayed me to present the memorial to the Governor - I showed the memorial to the Governor, Richard Edwards Esqr., who reprimanded him for his Impudence and bold assurance, and ordered him to desist from all such proceedings.(25)

Not until the first Sunday in October 1780 was the society able to celebrate together in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper at the meeting house. The certificate licensing John Jones as a dissenting minister was issued May 10 1781. In 1784, the year Governor Campbell granted a free liberty of conscience, a small silver cup was sent to the society by the Batter Street Dissenting Church, Plymouth. It is inscribed: The Gift of the Disenting Church Plym^th to the Dissent^g. Church in St John's Newfoundl^d. 1784.⁽²⁶⁾ Despite minor disturbances by gentlemen of the navy, opposition from the Rev. Walter Price and a riot in 1785, the society continued to grow and the decision was made to build a larger meeting house. The business involved in the building of the second meeting house must have occupied most of the time of John Jones. Correspondence with the committee and trustees in Poole seems to have been his responsibility, and preparation of the financial statement was also his responsibility. Realising that the cost of the meeting house had risen from an estimated £600/700 to over £900, must have been an immense burden for him. His handwriting in the Journal ends on page 64. There are only three entries in the baptismal register (Appendix B) between 1790 and 1800, and these are not in his handwriting. The only other entry in the Journal for those years is the report of the case of discipline.

For these same years, however, there are a number of references to John Jones and the meeting house in contemporary records. In 1791 William Black, the Methodist minister and General Superintendent for eastern North America, known as Bishop Black in Nova Scotia, visited Newfoundland.⁽²⁷⁾

Tuesday 9. Through mercy, we arrived safe at St. John's. I waited on Mr. Jones, the Presbyterian minister, who is a kind, friendly, christian man. He has suffered much for Jesus; and has been blessed in his labours. After spe nding the evening with him, I retired to a neighbouring house, where the good man had provided me lodgings. Wednesday 10. At six in the evening I preached in Mr. Jones's meeting house to about a hundred people. The old gentleman thanked me for my discourse, and added, "It was a good, plain, old Methodist sermon!" (28)

Another Methodist missionary, the Rev. George Smith, arrived in Newfoundland in 1794, having sailed from Poole on one of the Kemps' merchant ships. He remained for the most part in Conception Bay, also visiting Greenspond, Trinity and Bonavista, and must have visited St. John's on a number of occasions, as his son wrote:

A pious Dissenting Minister, the Rev. Mr. Jones was settled at St. John's; and with him my father afterwards became very intimate.(29)

He went back to England in 1795, returning in 1796 with William Thoresby.

On April 29 1797 William Thoresby, having sailed from Harbour Grace, walked the seven or eight miles from Portugal Cove to St. John's, where he was kindly received by John Jones. The following day he preached.

This day I have preached three sermons in Mr. Jones's Dissenting Meeting house. We had a tolerable congregation, but many of them are like the wild ass's colt and the most rude I ever met with in my travels anywhere. Whether I did them any good I cannot tell, time must prove that, But I reproved some of them openly and sharply.(30)

The following Sunday he went to the 6 a.m. prayer meeting led by John Jones, then preached himself at 11 o'clock, with several officers and soldiers present, and again at 2.30 p.m. With the congregation of about 60 he received the Lord's Supper in the dissenting form, then preached again in the evening.

.... all present were attentive and above half the congregation were in tears. I see that God can reach the hearts of the people in St. John's ....

On May 14 he preached again three times, when all present gave serious attention and many were in tears.

Perhaps it was the change of attitude towards dissent after the turmoil in France which prompted John Jones dissenting Minister and the dissenting community to present a Humble Address to Governor Sir Richard King in September 1792, assuring the Governor of their love to his majesty's crown and their subjection to the laws of the realm.⁽³¹⁾ [Appendix D] Later the same month, the application by John Jones for leave to enclose and cultivate two acres of land on the North West side of Fresh Water River, bounded on the South by the Path leading to Parsons Pond, and on the North east by the Path leading to upper Long Pond, was granted him by Governor King in consideration of his having served upwards of Twenty years in His Majesty's Army.⁽³²⁾ In 1793 he acquired more land with the purchase of a Garden for eight pounds eight shillings from John Lees, the Barrack master, who was returning to England. The land was close to the Old Garrison, near the modern Fort William building, and was bounded on the north by the road leading to the plantation of Nicholas Gill, called the Forrest, on the south by the meadow of Mr. Eppes, on the west by the road leading from the barrens and passing the artillery garden, and on the east by a meadow which John Jones was leasing from John Livingston.⁽³³⁾

The Plan, Elevation and Section of the 1789 meeting house depicts a horse and cow in the basement,⁽³⁴⁾ and presumably the land was used for pasture and producing hay. The inventory taken in March 1800 (Appendix G) included 2 scythes, six rakes and a pitchfork. The ten bushels of hay valued at 5 guineas were one of the most valuable items. Perhaps other crops were grown as Captain Brown, in his letter of June 5 1789, referred to the seeds he had sent. However, by 1796 the land granted by Governor King was leased to Charles Power, boatkeeper, for £35.⁽³⁵⁾ Charles Power and Francis Obey, also a fisherman, both lived in houses rented from John Jones at the time of the 1794/5 Census⁽³⁶⁾ and both were listed in the Inventory (page 151). Perhaps it was one of these houses for which John Jones received permission from the Governor to cover or re-shingle.⁽³⁷⁾ John Jones himself was living in a rented house in the Fourth Division, but by the time of the 1796 Census he was living in the house attached to the meeting house.⁽³⁸⁾

In October 1792 Governor King compared unfavourably the deplorable condition of the Established Church with that of the dissenting meeting house and the Romish chapel, both comfortable well built places of worship, suitable to accommodate their Congregations in this dreary Country during the Winter, and noted that the dissenters built their places of worship by voluntary subscription.⁽³⁹⁾ It was because he found the meeting house comfortably heated, compared with a cold and dreary church, that Thomas Durant, aged 17, employed as a clerk by Messrs. Henley and Burton (contributors to the meeting house subscription list), first began to attend the meeting house in 1793 to hear John Jones preach. Thomas Durant later wrote:

He was a man of primitive simplicity, of a moderate judgment, of considerable reading, for a person in his circumstances, of great integrity, of ardent piety, and of boundless affection. He was, from his harmlessness, kindness, an d simplicity, much respected.

Having been invited to the house of John Jones with another young acquaintance, Thomas Durant described how his host talked on general subjects, spicing his conversation with religion and ending with family parayer.

I was passionately fond of cards; scarcely spent an evening without them; but, contrary to all expectation, I found that evening to be the most pleasant I had ever known in my life. I had previously thought that the religion of suc h persons as Mr. Jones and his congregation was perfect gloom; but I left his house with a deep inpression that, if there were such a thing as happiness, it must be found in religion.

The next year Thomas Durant became a member of the meeting house, and, having decided to become a preacher, made use of John Jones' library. On his departure for England in 1795, John Jones said to him, I feel sure that God intends to use thee as a minister. In 1801 Thomas Durant was ordained as pastor of the Independent Church at Poole, succeeding the Rev. Edward Ashburner. He resigned in 1844, but continued to preach until his death in 1849.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Three letters from Poole, written in 1814, 1815 and 1818, show that he was acting as an agent for the meeting house, assisting the London Missionary Society in supplying a pastor.⁽⁴¹⁾

In I795 John Jones appeared as a witness at a Supreme Court hearing, as an executor of the will of Joseph Lowman, a long-time member of the meeting house and a signatory of the Address sent to the Dissenting Churches in 1786. The signature of John Jones is written in a shaky hand.⁽⁴²⁾ His letter written to Samuel Greatheed, describing the death of Ann Parker, was published in the Evangelical Magazine 1797. [Appendix E] Also in 1797 a loyal address, similar to that of 1792, was presented to Governor Waldegrave from John Jones and the dissenting community, promising support for His Majesty's Crown and due obedience and subjection to the Governor's commands. [Appendix D]

In July 1799, the Rev. John Hillyard, newly arrived in Newfoundland and on his way to Twillingate, reported to the directors of the London Missionary Society, that he was received in St. John's by John Jones with the affection of a father. He further reported:

They have a very good Meeting here and a settled Congregation of about 400 hearers, but there has not been much success attending the Word of late as formerly and Mr. Jones is much weakened by a paralytic stroke which he had last fall the effects of which I am afraid he will never recover. He is going with me to Harbour Grace to consult with Mr. Stretton relative to my departure for Twillingate ...(43)

The paralytic stroke was brought about, in Samuel Greatheed's opinion, by his growing infirmities, the consequences of his youthful dissipation, his military and local hardships, and his uninterrmitted labours in the Gospel.⁽⁴⁴⁾

The signature of John Jones appears again when he was a witness at the marriage of Daniel Newel on October 10 1799.⁽⁴⁵⁾ One month later, on November 18 1799, Daniel Newel witnessed the signature John Jones placed on his will (Appendix F, page 146). The last day of February 1800 his friends were with him. George Brace and two others stayed all night. After appearing to be as if preaching, asserting the necessity of faith in Christ and good works, and reciting Article 12 of the Prayer Book, Of Good Works, he died early in the morning of March 1. Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Skinner, who was described by Samuel Greatheed as peculiarly attached to John Jones, was given permission, at his own request, to arrange the funeral. John Jones had requested, in his will, for the utmost simplicity and plainness, the most frugal and least expensive manner in conducting his funeral. The Rev. John Harries preached at the service in the meeting house on March 4 nearly two thousand persons attending. Voluntarily the Royal Artillery Company at the garrison attended, and the coffin was taken by two Colonels and four principal gentlemen of the town,⁽⁴⁶⁾ to the cemetery at the Church of England, where he was buried under the steps of the church, in the old church-yard.⁽⁴⁷⁾

It is probable, that, notwithstanding the various disadvantages with which Mr. J. entered upon his ministry, no person ever died more universally respected, or more sincerely regretted. So wrote Samuel Greatheed in the memoir he wrote for the Evangelical Magazine after learning of the death of John Jones. The committee of the meeting house, in their letter to him, March 25 1800, enclosed a letter from the executors of his will giving details of his death and interment. These details Samuel Greatheed was able to use in his memoir, as well as drawing on his own recollections and his knowledge of the meeting house acquired through his correspondence with John Jones. There are nine of his letters transcribed in the Journal.

The view has been expressed that a memoir of Samuel Greatheed should have been included in the Dictionary of National Biography. His father was the principal clerk in a London bank and nephew to Samuel Greatheed, Whig M.P. for Coventry, 1747 to 1761. Educated as a military engineer at the Tower under the patronage of Lord Townsend, he was sent to the Canadas as an assistant engineer. There he was converted by John Mackelcan, a fellow officer. ...I don't suppose there was a greater profligate than I was at eighteen, he wrote later. Having been transferred with the Royal Engineers to St. John's, he associated there with John Jones and his congregation. Returning to England in 1784, he entered the Academy of the Rev. William Bull at Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, for the training of young men for the ministry. He was an assistant tutor at the Academy from 1786 to 1789. During this period he became a general agent for John Jones, undertaking to raise money in England for the building of the new meeting house in St. John's. In September 1788 he married Ann Hamilton, who had inherited, on the death of her brother, a large fortune from her father who had been a prosperous lace dealer. In 1789, having been ordained, he became pastor of the Independent church at Woburn, Bedfordshire.

Through William Bull Samuel Greatheed met William Cowper, who, in 1785, described him as a well-bred, agreeable young man, and, after hearing Samuel Greatheed's approval of his translation of the first book of the Iliad, which he read to him, described him as a man of letters and of taste. There are six letters written to Samuel Greatheed in William Cowper's published letters. The degree of social intimacy can be judged by William Cowper's letter of 1793: Your kind offer to us of sharing with you the house, which you at present inhabit .... wants nothing to win our acceptance, should it please God to give Mrs. Unwin a little more strength. It was Samuel Greatheed who met William Cooper on his return from a walk with William Hayley with the news that Mrs. Unwin had suffered a stroke and he provided information for William Hayley, whose biography, The Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper, was published in 1803. William Cowper died on April 25 1800. Samuel Greatheed had been scheduled to preach at the Independent church at Olney on May 18, and took the occasion to preach a funeral sermon. The sermon, published in the same issue of the Evangelical Magazine as the memoir of John Jones, made reference to William Cowper's treatment for mental illness, to his confused mind, to his belief that he was doomed to everlasting perdition and to his longstanding despair and thus earned Samuel Greatheed the enmity of William Cowper's cousin, Lady Hesketh. He wrote a memoir of William Cowper in 1803 and in 1814 published Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Cowper, based on his sermon, his memoir and William Hayley's biography.

Samuel Greatheed was associated, as a trustee,with the Evangelical Magazine, which first appeared in 1793, and was a director (one of the first, warmest and most generous friends and Directors) of the London Missionary Society, established in 1795. In 1805 he was the first editor of The Eclectic Review. After the death of his first wife in 1807, he resigned his position at Woburn, moved to Bishop's Hull, near Taunton, Somersetshire, and married Jane Stephenson, daughter of the Rev. Christopher Stephenson, vicar of Olney. There he devoted his time to archaeological studies and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians. He had two sons by his second wife: Samuel Stephenson, who became an Anglican minister, and Abbott Hamilton. He died, after a long illness, on February 15 1823.⁽⁴⁸⁾

During the time he served with the Royal Engineers in St. John's, Samuel Greatheed would have been acquainted with elder Nathan Parker, a person of strong influence and importance in the Dissenting Church of Christ, to whom John Jones bequeathed his silver rimmed spectacles, as a small token of my Love for him(page 144). He was born on September 12 1753, the fifth of seven children of David Parker and Mary Upham of Malden, Massachusetts. He was 22 when he came to Newfoundland in 1775 and joined the small society worshipping with John Jones. In 1777, he and Wallis Lang, both elders, built the first meeting house. In 1779, at the Anglican church, he married Ann Barnes, daughter of Andrew Barnes from whom land was bought for the second meeting house. By 1794 his household comprised seven children and two servants. His occupation in the Census of 1794/5 is listed as that of glazier, in 1795 he was also described as a builder and in the will of Andrew Barnes as a carpenter.

However, in 1796, the year his wife died, Nathan Parker was styled Gentleman when he was appointed a Captain Lieutenant in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Within a short time his new career as a merchant had begun. Earlier, in 1794, he had leased Perryman's Plantation on the Lower Wharf. The partnership with Wallis Lang probably ended by 1795, when Wallis Lang surrendered his share in property they had bought jointly. By 1799 Nathan Parker had formed a partnership with Stephen Knight, merchant and broker, and by 1801 they had stores at Trinity and in 1802 bought Churchill's Plantation in the S. W. arm of Trinity harbour. By that year they also had property at Quidi Vidi for servants in their trade and fishery. Samuel Bulley Junior, who had married Nathan Parker's daughter, Anna, had joined the parnership by 1807, when Parker, Knight and Bulley advertised their six pounders, four pounders, gun powder and cannon shot in the first issue of the Gazette. Jenkin Jones, in a report to the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company, described the firm of Parker and Knight, whose property was insured for £9,900 as our oldest customers and amongst the most respectable people in the Town. When both partners died in 1813, Nathan Parker formed a new partnership with Messrs. Bulley and Job of Liverpool, and used the stars and stripes as a house flag. Chief Justice Richard Routh could have been thinking of Nathan Parker when he wrote about one merchant who had expanded his property from a small shop in 1799 until he had become the owner of great fishing plantations in Quiddey Viddey, stores in St. John's and also concerned in trading ships.

As early as 1780 Nathan Parker had served on the petty jury. On April 25 1796 he was appointed Captain Lieutenant in the Royal Newfoundland regiment. After 1800 he served on many town committees: the Hospital, the Lighthouse, the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor. He served as coroner, on the Grand Jury for town improvements, chaired a meeting for the purpose of setting up a bank, and in 1816, when he announced his intention of leaving Newfoundland, he was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce.

Influential as he had become in the town, he was even more so in the meeting house, especially after the death of John Jones. He did not support the Auxiliary Missionary Society, established by the Rev. W.J.Hyde in his absence, because money raised left the country, but preferred a Newfoundland Missionary School Society, which the Rev. James Sabine appointed by Nathan Parker, hoped to establish. In 1817 Nathan Parker and his friend James Melledge, another meeting house member, left for Boston. Nathan Parker, Gentleman, left a house and garden, originally bought from Edward Freeman,to the church, the rents of which were to be used for the annual payment of the minister's salary and other expenses of the church. James Sabine believed that Nathan Parker and James Melledge were largely responsible for the arrival of the American brig, Messenger, which brought relief provisions to St. John's following the fires of November 7 and 21 1817 which destroyed a large part of the town and winter supplies. Nathan Parker died on August 18 1830 at Dorchester, with an estate worth over £16,000.⁽⁴⁹⁾

The transcription is as close to the original text as possible, apart from the removal of erasures and the addition of letters in brackets where letters are missing because of worn page ends. Written at a time when spelling and punctuation were not standardised, the text also carries the additional mistakes of the members, probably eight, who copied the letters. The handwriting of John Jones ceases on page 64.

1. This was used by D.W. Prowse, A History of Newfoundland >From The English, Colonial, and Foreign Records, (London, 1896), 630 and is listed in the bibliography of the Cambridge History of the British Empire, (Cambridge, 1930), Vol.6,885, but now cannot be traced. Mrs. Siddall's information was derived from a chapter by S.D.Jackson in John Wood, Memoir of Henry Wilkes, (Montreal, 1887).

2. Prepared and deposited there in 1975 by the Rev. J.S.S. Armour, minister at St. David's from 1962 to 1983.

3. Hans Rollmann, John Jones, James O'Donel, and the Question of Religious Tolerance in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland: A Correspondence, Newfoundland Quarterly, (St. John's, 1984), Vol. LXXX, No.1, 23-27; Cyril J. Byrne, Gentlemen-Bishops and Faction Fighters, (St. John's, 1984), 47-51.

4. The watermarks are reproduced in T.L. Gravell and G. Miller, A Catalogue of Foreign Watermarks found on paper used in America 1700-1835, (New York, 1983), 89, 159, 208.

5. The history of Congregationalism can be found in such works as R.W.Dale,History of English Congregationalism, (London, 1907); R.Tudur Jones, Congregationalism in England 1662-1962, (London, 1962); Michael Watts, The Dissenters, (Oxford, 1978); G.F.Nuttall, Visible Saints, (Oxford, 1957).

6. Evangelical Magazine 1800, (London, 1800), 441-449. PANL, Box 24A.

7. Edmund Violet, Remarks Upon the Life and Manners of the Rev. John Jones formerly Pastor of the Independent Church, St. John's, Newfoundland, (St. John's, 1810). Centre for Newfoundland Studies.

8. PANL, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, A 190, David Rowland to the Secretary, Jan. 29 1817.

9. Archives of St. David's Presbyterian Church, Journal, 368,369,389.

10. Five of the members published An Apologeticall Narration, (London, 1643), reprinted by editor William Haller in Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution 1638-1647, (New York, 1965).

11. 13 and 14 Car.II, cap.4.

12. Wm. & M.,cap.18.

13. Hans Rollmann, Quakers, Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador,Vol.4, 487-8; and Anglicans, Puritans and Quakers in Seventeenth Century Newfoundland (as yet unpublished).

14. Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, B6/211, Langman to the Secretary, November 4 1767, B6/171, November 15,1778.

15. Evangelical Magazine 1800, 441.

16. Edmund Violet, op.cit., 3,11.

17. Public Record Office, War Office, 10/62.

18. County Record Office, Hereford, Baptismal and Marriage Registers, Preston-on-Wye.

19. PRO WO, 10/63,73,85.

20. John Stretton to Eliza Bennis, June 30 1777, Christian correspondence; being a collection of letters, written by the late Rev. John Wesley, and several Methodist preachers, in connection with him, to the late Mrs. Eliza Bennis, with her answers, chiefly explaining and enforcing the doctrine of sanctification, now first published from the originals (Philadelphia, 1809), 225-6.

21. John Stretton to Eliza Bennis, December 2 1778, ibid., 238. I am indebted to Dr. Hans Rollmann for bringing my attention to these letters.

22. RHL, S.P.G., B6/206, Edward Langman to the Secretary, November 30, 1778.

23. Edmund Violet, op.cit., 25.

24. Evangelical Magazine 1800, 448.

25. RHL, S.P.G., B6/214, Edward Langman to the Secretary, November 2 1779.

26. The two-handled porringer or caudle cup, made in 1704 by master silversmith John Gibbons, would have been used at the Batter Street church since 1704 when it was built. The building was purchased by Lord Astor in 1924 when it became part of the Virginia House Settlement, a charitable organisation.

27. G.S. French Black, William, DCB,Vol.6, 62-68.

28. The Arminian Magazine for the Year 1792 (London, 1792), 122.

29. William Bramwell Smith, Memoir of the Rev. George Smith, Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, January, 1833, 7-11. I am indebted to Dr. Hans Rollmann for bringing this to my attention.

30. William Thoresby, A Narrative of God's Love to William Thoresby, (Redruth, 1801), 96-99.

31. PANL, GN 2/1/a, Colonial Secretary's Office, Outgoing Correspondence, Vol. 12, 7 September 1792.

32. PANL, GN 2/1/a, Vol.12, 25 September 1792.

33. ASD, Bill of Sale, December 24 1793.

34. This "PlAN, ELAVATION and SECTION of the DISSENTING MEETING-HOUSE, ST.JOHNS NEWFOUNDLAND" (pen and ink with watercolour) was acquired by the National Archives of Canada and first catalogued in 1922. It was from this plan that David Webber, formerly with the Newfoundland Museum, was able to produce the model of the meeting house for many years on display there but currently in storage. The plan was reproduced in Bruce G. Wilson, Colonial Identities - Canada from 1760 to 1815(Ottawa, 1988) 154-155.

35. Confederation Building, Registry of Deeds, Misc. Deeds and Wills, Vol.15, 175-178.

36. PANL, GN 2/39/a, An Account of the Inhabitants 1794/5.

37. PANL, GN 2/1/a, Vol. 12, October 25 1795.

38. PANL, GN 2/39/A, 1796/1797.

39. PANL, GN 2/1/a, Vol. 12, 11 October 1792.

40. The Evangelical Magazine 1850, Memoir of the late Rev. Thomas Durant, 225-233.

41. Provincial Reference Library, London Missionary Society, Thomas Durant to the Secretary, March 7 1814, July 26 1815, March 4 1818.

42. PANL, Gn 5/2/A/1, Supreme Court Records, November 10 1795.

43. Prov. Ref. Lib., London Missionary Society, Newfoundland Letters, John Hillyard to the Directors, June 24 1799.

44. Evangelical Magazine 1800, 447.

45. PANL, Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Marriage Records, October 10 1799.

46. Evangelical Magazine 1800, 448.

47. John Wood, Memoir of Henry Wilkes, D.D.,LL.D., His Life and Times (London and Montreal, 1887), 5.

48. For Samuel Greatheed see John Morison, The Fathers and Founders of the London Missionary Society (London, 1840), Vol.2, 287-289; W.P.Courtney, Notes and Queries, 11th Series, V, January 12 1912, 71-73, March 23 1912, 236; James King and Charles Ryskamp, editors, Letters and Prose Writing of William Cowper (Oxford, 1981) Vol.II, 351, Vol.IV, 241, XXI; James King, William Cowper (Durham, 1986), 241; Memoranda respecting the Poet Cowper, four pages of observations on William Cowper's life in Samuel Greatheed's hand supplied for William Hayley's benefit, John Rylands Memorial Library, University of Manchester; Evangelical Magazine 1800, 458-462, Evangelical Magazine 1803, 129-137, 177-186, Evangelical Magazine 1823, 125-126; Richard Lovett, History of the London Missionary Society (Oxford, 1899) Vol.I, 15-16; Gentleman's Magazine, 1807, Part II, 979.

49. For Nathan Parker see Malden, Massachusetts, Vital records, 65; PANL, GN 2/39/A, An Account of the Inhabitants residing in the harbour and district 1794/5; Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Marriage Records; GN 5/2/A/1, Records of the Supreme Court, 1795-8,15, 1798-1802,68, 1802-1805,185; GN 5/2/A/9, Records of the Probate Court, 1798-1802, 11 March 1797; Vol. 8-9, 124, Vol.11-12,395, Vol.18, 55-56, 12 October 1804; MG 543, Report by Jenkin Jones to the Phoenix Fire Insurance Co., 193; ASD, Indenture 1817; Conf. Bldg., Misc. Deeds and Wills, Vol.2, 92-94; J.W. Withers, St. John's Over A Century Ago, in H.M. Mosdell, When Was That (St. John's, 1923, reprinted 1974), 150.; R.B.Job, John Job's Family Devon - Newfoundland - Liverpool 1730-1953 (St. John's, 1953), 28; H.A. Innis, The Cod Fisheries (Toronto, 1954), 294; Royal Gazette, October 24 1810, April 15,July 8, October 14, November 18, 1813, March, July 16 1814, December 3 1816, April 1 1817; Prov. Ref. Lib., London Missionary Society, James Sabine to the Secretary, July 31 1817; Probate Court Records, Norfolk County, Massachusetts.