Wellington, Somerset, Baptist and Independent Meetings

Wellington, Somerset, Baptist and Independent Meetings. In a brief historic sketch of the church, Robert Day, of Bristol Academy, arrived in 1746 and remaining 44 years until his death in April 1791.  He was succeeded by John Cherry, of Halifax, who remained until 1820, when he removed to the church at Bampton.  He was succeeded by Joseph Baynes, who remained until 1862. See Baptist Church, Wellington, Somerset. Manual [South Street Church], [1905], 2-4.  Concerning the Independents, the minister in the early 1790s was John Giles, who at a public meeting in Wellington in 1792, he apparently signed the petition by Reeves’s Association for “supporting the King and Constitution of this Nation against levellers and republicans,” but he left the church for America in 1795, espousing strong republican notions at that time. See James H. M. Jolliffe, A Short History of the United Reformed Church Wellington  ([Wellington], 1980), 8.