John Saffery Family of Salisbury

John Saffery (1763-1825) and Maria Grace Andrews (1772-1858)  John's first marriage was to Elizabeth Horsey on 11 April 1786. She was the daughter of Rev. Joseph Horsey, Baptist minister at Portsmouth. She died on the 27 May 1798, without issue. John Saffery married a second time to Maria Grace Andrews on 20 August 1799.  She was the daughter of James (b. 1746) and Mary Andrews (c. 1748-91) of Isleworth. The Safferys had the following children:

1. Philip John Saffery (21 August 1800-5 July 1869, Edmonton, North London) succeeded his father as pastor at Brown Street, Salisbury. He then worked for the BMS for a time and then as Secretary to the Religious  Tract Society for many years. 1st marriage to Elizabeth Swain Scriven (she died in 1845); 2nd marriage to Ann Dendy (sister of Walter Dendy, Baptist Missionary Society missionary to Jamaica); they had 2 children. 

2. Marianne Saffery (1802-21 May 1876, Bratton), never married, apparently working for a time either as a governess or in a dissenting school in Weymouth, Dorset, living out her later years in the home of her sister, Jane, in Bratton, in whose home her mother had also lived the final twenty-three years of her life. 

3. William Carey Saffery (10 September 1803-June 1846) married Selina Eliza Pitt; they had 4 children and lived mostly in Peckham, South London, where Eliza may have operated a school for a time. 1st Child died 1842, age 7; 2nd child died 1848, age 11; 3rd child died 1859, age 19; 4th child died 1843 in infancy. Selina Eliza Saffery died in August 1844, age 33, and William died in June 1843, age 4o.

4. Jane Saffery (1 May 1805-December 1884, Bratton) m. Joshua Whitaker (her cousin) of Bratton in 1835. 

a. Anna Jane Whitaker (1838-1925) never married; she was was the subject of three poems by Maria Saffery.

b. Philip Whitaker died in early middle age in 1845, not long after his cousin, William Carey Saffery, in 1843, and his wife, Selina Eliza Pitt Saffery, in 1844, a period of considerable grief for both families. 

c. Anne Whitaker was clearly a favorite not only of her mother but also of her aunt Maria, who visited her often at Holcombe after her marriage to Robert Ashman Green in September 1829. Her second daughter, Rosalie Anne Green (1834-1905) received two poems in her honor by Maria Saffery (see Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 5, poems 181, 197). 

d. George Whitaker attended boarding school at Frome and then entered Cambridge University, returned to his mother’s original church and taking orders to become an Anglican priest. He served as vicar at Oakington, Cambridgeshire (1840-51), before moving to Toronto, Canada, where he gained considerable recognition as the first Provost of Trinity College (now a part of the University of Toronto). He did not dissolve all ties to his nonconformist upbringing, however, marrying Charlotte Burton, daughter of Richard Burton, Baptist missionary to Sumatra, in 1844. 

e. Edwin Eugene Whitaker married Mary Attwater (d. 1865) in 1841. She was the daughter of Philemon (1787-1832) and Eliza Penney Attwater (1789-1877) of Nunton, and granddaughter of Gay Thomas Attwater (1736-92), brother of Jane Attwater. Maria Saffery wrote a poem commemorating her wedding (Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 5, poem 208), another instance of the continuing connections between the families that comprised the original Steele circle (the Attwaters) and that of the later Saffery circle (the Whitakers) and of the role poetry played in celebrating those connections. A large collection of the letters of Anne Whitaker’s children, both among themselves and to her and her husband, Philip, can be found in the Reeves Collection, Boxes 1, 9, 10-11, Bodleian. In Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 5, poem 246, are lines written by the three youngest sons of Anne Whitaker – John, George, and Edwin – commemorating their father’s 54th birthday in 1820. Marjorie Reeves examines the records of Bratton Farm and the farming habits of the three generations of Whitaker farmers – Philip, Joshua, and John – in Sheep Bell, pp. 62-65.

5. Samuel Saffery (21 February 1807-September 1858 in London) spent most of 1821-23 serving an apprenticeship in London, living in the home of a Mrs. Stennett, most likely a relation of Samuel Stennett (1727-95), Baptist minister and hymn writer at Little Wild Street, London, and friend of William Steele and his daughter, Mary, of Broughton.  Samuel copied more than fifty letters sent to him by his parents and siblings during that time into a bound volume that now resides in the Reeves Collection, Box 17, Bodleian Library. He later spent some time on the island of St. Helena, whether for his health or business is not completely known  He married Charlotte Reeve in 1855, but died three years later.

6. John Saffery (December 1808-9 September 1889 in Hastings) married Jane Hall and had 8 children. Included in the Reeves Collection, Box 17/8, Bodleian Library, is his printed poem of thirteen quatrains titled "Lines written on reading the speech of his Majesty, the King of Prussia in answer to an address from the Deputies of the National Assembly, and the Deputies of the City of Berlin, on his Birthday, Oct. 15, 1848," accompanied by a letter of appreciation her received from Christian-Karl Bunsen (1791-1860), the Prussian ambassador, dated 2 November 1848. Copies of the poem and the letter by Bunsen were sent to Jane Saffery Whitaker by Jane Hall Saffery, accompanied by a letter, dated 5 December 1848, explaining the circumstances of the poem and the letter. 

7. Edwin Cecil Saffery (May 1812-March 1814) died young.