William Steele, Broughton, to Mary Steele, East Knoyle, [Wednesday] 24 December 1777.

Broughton Dec: 24th 1777

   My Dear Maria’s Letter of the 17th did not come to hand till Monday last, when the good News of your health it brought gave us the most grateful pleasure, a pleasure you will undoubtedly feel when I tell you that we are indulg’d by a beneficent providence with the same blessing, tho’ you must feel the alloy of Sorrow on Acct of your Aunt, whose Sufferings continue much the same as does her deafness.  Patty is troubled with Chillblains one is broke on her Toe which makes her very lame but now she is taken proper care of we hope it will soon be cured. – I am glad to hear Miss Frowd is like to accompany you to Broughton, I hope to be with you (God willing) next Tuesday evening.

   Mr Lewis continues still with us, he is very agreeable to us as a Companion as well as a Preacher, has a good deal of such knowledge as you wou’d I think esteem him for & be pleas’d with his conversation, I don’t know how long he will continue with us but I suppose two or three weeks.  I should be very glad to have him settle here, but I doubt our Situation will not please him. Mr Stephens from Newbury is to come for two or three weeks & Mr Lewis to supply his place, I wrote to him before Mr L came otherwise should not have done it as yet.

   The Conversation of our polite Town is pretty much taken up by an extraordinary Wedding that is to take place to morrow.  Mr G Barton with Miss Fanny Woodward & that with the Approbation of the Parents on both sides, will it not, think you, be in the next Sarum Journal with the usual Eulogiums on the Lady, of Beauty Fortune & every other Accomplishment to render the Marriage Life happy?

   Our best commendations with the Compts of the season attend all the Hospitable Family you are now with.  The dear little Girls desire their best Love to their Tissy whose company they long for at home.

   Yr Mo joins in sincerest Wishes for the happiness of my dear Girl with her affectionate Far

                                                         Wm Steele

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, pp. 286-87 (annotated version); STE 4/5/lxii, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Postmark: Salisbury. Address:  Miss Steele / at the Revd Mr Russ’s / East Knoyle near / Shaftesbury. 

Mary Steele will compose two poems at this time dedicated to Sarah Froude: ‘Inscribed in Miss Frowd’s Book Sacred to Friendship 1778’, and ‘Lines written at Motcombe near the Dwelling of the same Friend’ (poems 69-70); also one to Mary Froude, ‘To Miss M. Frowd.’  

Francis Lewis, who served as pastor at Newbury between 1748 and 1774  After his departure, students from Bristol Academy supplied for a time until a Mr. Stephens took over as pastor for two years, 1776-78. In 1779 Lewis returned, only to die in January 1780. Timothy Thomas, brother-in-law to Caleb Evans and Thomas Mullett, supplied for a while before James Bicheno left Bristol Academy and assumed the pastorate later that year (see W. J. Lewendon, Notes on Newbury Baptists (Newbury: Simpson & Son, 1940), pp. 12-14).

Three George Bartons joined the Baptist church at Broughton during the eighteenth century:  the elder Barton (d. 1764) joined on 7 March 1722; the second Barton joined on 24 April 1748; and the third George Barton (the one referred to in the above letter) joined on 7 February 1779, not long after the date of the letter. He was removed as a member of the church in March 1790, but the cause was not specified. A Deborah Woodford, probably the mother of the Miss Woodford to whom Mr. Barton was to marry, joined the Baptist church on 7 May 1758. There is no record of the younger Miss Woodford ever becoming a member (see Broughton Baptist Church Book, Angus Library, Oxford).