William Steele III and William Steele IV

William Steele III (1689-1769), succeeded his uncle, Henry Steele (1655-1739), as pastor of the Baptist congregation at Broughton in 1739. The two elder Steeles were not only ministers but also successful timber merchants and farmers who by the mid-1700s had become two of the largest landowners in Broughton and the surrounding area.  In late 1713 or early 1714, William Steele III married Anne Froud (1684-1720) (also spelled “Frowd”) of Tinhead, across the Salisbury Plain from Broughton, the daughter of Edward Froud (d. 1714), pastor of the Baptist church at Erlestoke, Wiltshire. Anne and William III had two children: William IV (1715-85) and Anne (1717-78). Anne Froud Steele died in 1720, and in 1723 William Steele III remarried, this time to another Baptist woman, Anne Cator Steele (1685-1760) of Trowbridge, Wiltshire (Broome 48-52). Prior to her marriage, Anne Cator dabbled in poetry, but after 1723 she devoted her energies to her diary, maintaining it until her death in 1760, the surviving portions of which comprise one of the most substantial examples of daily spiritual autobiography by a nonconformist woman in the eighteenth century, inspiring her relation, Jane Attwater, to follow in her footsteps, establishing the two genres—poetry and spiritual life writing—in which the women writers of the Steele circle would prove exceptional exemplars. Anne Cator Steele’s marriage produced one child, Mary (1724-72), a talented poet who married Joseph Wakeford (1719-85) of Andover, Hampshire, in 1749. As “Amira,” she joined her half-brother William (“Philander),” his wife Mary (“Delia”), her half-sister Anne (“Theodosia),” and their Dissenting ministerial friends John Lavington (“Lysander”) of Ottery St. Mary and Philip Furneaux (“Lucius”) of London in the 1740s and ’50s as the first generation of poets emanating from the Steele home in Broughton.

Though he did not follow his father and uncle as pastor of the church, William Steele IV (1715-85) was nevertheless a prominent layman in the congregation at Broughton, Hampshire, and a leader among the Baptists in the West Country. He served as a messenger to the meetings of the Western Association of Particular Baptist Churches and a founding member of the Bristol Education Society (1770). Thomas Steadman writes about the Steele family's work in promoting the Baptist cause in the West Country during the eighteenth century: “For nearly a century the family of the Steeles ranked high among the friends and supporters of the interests of religion in that part of the country, and of the Baptist interest in particular, to which they manifested a uniform and undeviating attachment. Those of the family who preached, not only gave their labours, but were the principal contributors on all occasions when money was called for, as well as generous givers to all in the neighbourhood or from a distance, who came to solicit pecuniary aid. The places of worship were provided and fitted up principally at their expense. These were not splendid edifices, it is true, but convenient, and adapted to the simplicity of the times, and of the persons who occupied them” (46) (see also Account, 20, 24, 26). William Steele IV continued to build the family’s timber business and increased the Steele’s land holdings, which by the 1770s included farms and properties in Broughton, Lower Wallop (just outside Broughton), Yeovil and Halstock in Somerset, Sedgehill in Wiltshire, Nether Valley, and Roydon near Lymington (Broome 233-38).  In 1758 William Steele IV purchased a stately Georgian manor house (later called  “Broughton House”), located just down the lane from “Grandfathers,” where Anne Steele lived with her parents before moving in with her brother’s family in 1769. 

William Steele IV married Mary Bullock (1713-62) of Yeovil, Somerset, in 1749. Their union produced one daughter, Mary Steele (1753-1813), who would follow in the footsteps of her famous aunt, Anne Steele ("Theodosia") as a poet. Mary Bullock Steele died in 1762. In 1768 William Steele IV remarried, this time to Martha Goddard (1734-91) of Pershore, Worcestershire.  The Goddards were a prominent Baptist family from Bristol. Martha Goddard had been living for some time in Pershore with her sister Elizabeth, who was married to the Rev. John Ash (1724-79), the local Baptist minister and close friend of Caleb Evans of Bristol, the latter having been intimate with the Goddards and the Steeles of Broughton since the late 1760s. This union produced three children: Anne (1769-1859), Martha (1770-1834), and William (who died in infancy in 1772).