John Shoveller

John Shoveller (1760-1851) was married to Susanna Horsey (1759-1816) of Portsmouth, sister to Elizabeth Horsey Saffery (1762-98), the first wife of John Saffery, and daughter of Joseph Horsey, Baptist minister at Portsea.. After the death of Joseph Horsey, Shoveller published Memoirs of the Late Rev. Joseph Horsey, of Portsea, with Mr. Horsey’s Last Farewell Address to this Church, a Short Time Previous to his Decease (Portsea: Printed and sold by James Horsey. Sold also by Seeley, Williams, and Button, London; James, Bristol; Saffery, Salisbury; and Jolliffe, Crewkerne, 1803). After eleven years working as a ropemaker, painter, glazier, and coal merchant in Portsmouth, he removed to London in 1791, living in Upper Newman Street, where he commenced work as a copper-plate printer, creating the prints for most of the portraits that appeared in the early volumes of the Evangelical Magazine, becoming acquainted as well with most of the Baptist and evangelical Calvinist Anglican ministers in London, including John Newton. His painting connections may have been enhanced by the earlier marriage of his sister, Mary Shoveller, to the artist Robert Bowyer (1758-1834), also a member of the Portsmouth congregation under Horsey, who after his marriage moved to London to commence work as a miniaturist in the 1780s (see Bowyer, Robert).  During their time in London (1791-6), the Shovellers worshiped in the Baptist congregation in Eagle Street, under the ministry of the Rev. William Smith, though, as his ‘Memoir’ points out, due to travelling distances, he often worshipped at the Tottenham Court Chapel, founded by George Whitefield. He returned to Portsea in September 1796, reuniting with Rev. Horsey’s congregation, who was also being assisted at that time by Daniel Miall and a young Joseph Ivimey. Shoveller was instrumental in founding a new congregation in a neighbouring community, Mary-le-bone, where he, as well as a Mr Knight and James Saffery, brother of John Saffery, regularly preached at the turn of the nineteenth century. Between 1803 and 1814, Shoveller ministered to congregations at Romsey, Hampshire; at Pembroke Street, Plymouth Dock (replacing William Steadman, formerly at Broughton); and at Newport, Isle of Wight. In 1814 he accepted the call to pastor the Baptist congregation at Poole, where he preached until 1826, returning at that time to Portsea, where he would continue to preach in retirement until his 85th year. John Shoveller the elder grew up in Portsea, attending the Baptist congregation in Portsmouth Common (later Meeting-house Alley) under John Lacy. The Shovellers’ three surviving children were Susanna (b. 1781), Elizabeth (b. 1783), and John (1796-1832), who would later study at Bristol Baptist Academy and follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as a Baptist minister, serving as minister to Baptist congregations in Melksham (Wiltshire), Bridgenorth (Shropshire), Penzance (Cornwall), and Henley-on-Thames (Oxfordshire). In 1831 he replaced James Coultart (another missionary friend of the Safferys) as minister of the Baptist church in Kingston, Jamaica, where he died in 1832. For the elder Shoveller, see ‘Memoir’, Baptist Magazine 43 (1851), 131-39; for a memoir of the younger Shoveller, see Baptist Magazine 24 (1832), 421-5.