Joseph Ash

Joseph Ash (b. 10 May 1771-30 April 1842) was the youngest son of John Ash (1724-79), Baptist minister at Pershore (1751-79), and Elizabeth Goddard Ash. In the early 1790s he  removed to Birmingham to be near his sister, Elizabeth Ash Hopkins (at nearby Alcester) and to learn a trade (he eventually became an undertaker in Bristol). He may have arrived in Birmingham from Pershore in 1789, shortly after his the marriage of his eldest sister, Elizabeth (b. 1752) to Joshua Hopkins of Alcester. He remained in Birmingham (most likely serving an apprenticeship) into 1794, when he removed to Bristol, where one sister was already residing. He had joined at Cannon Street during his time in Birmingham (under the ministry of Samuel Pearce) and would eventually join at Broadmead in 1799 (during the ministry of John Ryland, Jr.) with his wife, Susanna Day, whom he met not long after his arrival in Bristol and whom he would marry in August 1797, and his sister-in-law.  His wife died in January 1814, but not before she had bore six children, of which at least two died young. In later life, according to Ernest A. Payne, Ash lived in Horsley and "moved in the Nailsworth-Shortwood circle," also noting that his daughter, Ann Ash (b. 1798), married Joseph Baynes, who served as the Baptist minister at Wellington from 1820 to 1860 ("The Diaries," 353).  He worked as an undertaker early in his time in Bristol (possibly with Isaac James, who also worked in that business among many other occupations he pursued), but later worked in the linen trade in association with two brothers named Heineman (Payne, "The Diaries," 357) until 1820, at which time he moved to Horsley, though he seems to have maintained his connection with the Broadmead church to the end of his life. He died in Bristol on 30 April 1842.