William Steadman

William Steadman (1764-1837) was raised in Shropshire. After completing his studies at Bristol Academy, he became pastor of the Baptist congregation at Broughton, Hampshire, in 1789. During his time at Broughton, he developed a close friendship with John Saffery, pastor at Brown Street in Salisbury. In 1797 the two men itinerated throughout the West Country, primarily in Cornwall, as part of a new home missionary effort by the Particular Baptists. Steadman left Broughton for Plymouth Dock in 1798. In 1805 he removed to Bradford, Yorkshire, to become the first president of the new academy at Bradford and pastor of the Baptist congregation there. Though his heart lay with missions and the work of the BMS, Steadman’s eyesight and domestic situation would never have allowed him to serve in that capacity. He became secretary of the Yorkshire and Lancashire Association, and actively supported the BMS and the Bible Society. During his tenure at Horton Academy, over 150 students entered the academy. He was awarded an honorary D.D. by Brown University in 1815. Steadman had been a student of Caleb Evans at Bristol Academy in the mid- to late 1780s. He first met Mrs. Martha Steele and her daughters Anne and Martha at Bath near the end of 1788; she invited him to preach at Broughton, which he did in March 1789. He began preaching consistently at Broughton in July 1790, was ordained there in early fall of 1791, and remained as pastor until 1798. Another reason why Steadman’s connections with the Steele’s were so strong is that prior to his marriage in 1793, he lived at Broughton House, ‘where domestic comfort was heightened by intellectual refinement, and sanctified by religion’.  Mrs. Steele died in 1791, and young Anne married at the end of that year, leaving Mary Steele and her live-in companion, Lucy Kent, and Mary’s younger half-sister, Martha Steele, living at Broughton House. It was this group that Steadman joined and remained with for about two years at the beginning of his ministry at Broughton. See Thomas Steadman, ed. Memoir of the Rev. William Steadman, D.D. (London: Thomas Ward, 1838), 44, 54-55, 135; also Walter Fancutt, ‘William Steadman’s Hampshire Years’, Baptist Quarterly 16 (1955-56), 365-69; Sharon James, “Revival and Renewal in Baptist Life: The Contribution of William Steadman (1764-1837),” Baptist Quarterly 37 (1997-1998), 263-282; idem, “William Steadman (1764-1837),” ed. Haykin, in The British Particular Baptists, 2:163-181.