William Mursell

William Mursell (1761-1838) was originally from a family based on the Isle of Wight. He served for many years as the Baptist minister at Lymington. He and his wife, the former Mary New (d. 1826), had several children, including James Phillippo Mursell (1799-1885), who also became a prominent Baptist minister, succeeding the celebrated Robert Hall as minister at Harvey Lane, Leicester, in 1826, the same church in which Elizabeth Coltman, the close friend of Mary Steele and Mary Reid, worshiped after 1807. Rev. Mursell’s daughter, Sarah (1802-65), married the Baptist minister, Isaac Taylor Hinton, in 1822 and eventually emigrated to America. The Greens of Portsmouth intermarried with the Mursells (they would later intermarry with the Whitakers of Bratton). Nicholas Mursell and Mary Green were married at Portsmouth in 1795; their first child, Harriet (b. 1796), appears to have become associated with Maria Saffery’s school, although it is possible she was a member of the Green family who worshiped in the Safferys congregation in Brown Street, Salisbury. It is also possible that both Green families were related. Letters to Maria Grace Saffery from Sarah Mursell, Emma Green, Sarah Philips, and Harrriet Mursell, c. 1819-32, can be found in the Saffery/Attwater Papers, acc. 142, II.A.7, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford.