John Vowell, Sr.

John Vowell, Sr., along with his son, John, Jr., his son’s wife, Sarah, and their daughter, Eliza, were all stationers, first at Watling Street and then at 133 Leadenhall Street, 1745-1813. Vowell turned the business over to his son in 1773, but remained active in the Court of Stationers until his death in 1801 at the age of 94.   John Vowell, Jr., was deceased by 1792, for Sarah Vowell operated the firm alone from 1792-1800; William Weare eventually joined her, taking over the business in 1808.  By 1805 Vowell and Weare had become the primary stationers to the East India Company. The Vowells were Baptists, attending the church at Carter Lane, Southwark, under John Rippon, one of the leading Baptist ministers of his day.  Eliza’s father subscribed to the Bristol Education Society, the fund-raising arm of Bristol Baptist College, in 1774.  Miss Vowell joined Carter Lane on 7 April 1799. A letter from Eliza to the Rev. Samuel Pearce (1766-99), pastor of the Baptist church at Cannon Street in Birmingham, dated 20 April 1799, demonstrates her active involvement in Baptist affairs and the family business.   She was sending Pearce materials from Ebenezer Maitland, for many years a member of the Protestant Diss­enting Deputies. She recounts a recent conversation with Andrew Fuller (Baptist minister at Kettering and Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society), and then tells Pearce that on his next visit to London “no one in London shall give you a heartier welcome than Mother & self if you will favor us so abundantly as to grant us any of yr Company.”  Unfortunately, Pearce’s health was deteriorating, and he would die later that year.  In 1800-01, Eliza Vowell subscribed to the Baptist Missionary Society; her mother joined her in 1804-05.  See An Account of the Bristol Education Society Anno 1770 (Bristol: M. Ward, 1776), 25; Horsleydown and Carter Lane Church Book, 1719–1808, MS., Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle, London; Pearce Family Letters, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford; BMS Periodical Accounts, vol. 2, p. 207; vol. 3, p. 136; Universal British Directory, 5 vols. (London, 1791-98), 5.141; Ian Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775-1800: A Preliminary Checklist of Members (Kent: William Dawson, 1977), 234.