JENKINS, JOSEPH (1743 - 1819), Baptist minister

son of the Evan Jenkins (1712 - 1723 March 1752) who was pastor of Wrexham ' Old Meeting ' for some months in 1737 and again (after a period at Exeter) from 1740 till 1752, and grandson of John Jenkins (1656? - 1733), pastor of Rhydwilym. Joseph was only 9 when his father died, but Thomas Llewellyn saw to his education in London; later, he went to Aberdeen (M.A. 1765, D.D. 1790). He was baptized in London in 1766; Benjamin Francis preached on the occasion. In 1769 he opened a school at Wrexham, also undertaking the pastorate of an Independent congregation in Crook's Lane, Chester - he had begun to preach while in Scotland. A sermon of his on the occasion of a great explosion at Chester was published (1772) in a Welsh version by Benjamin Evans (1740 - 1821), at that time minister at Llanuwchllyn. In 1773 (8 September) he was ordained pastor of his father's former church, the Old Meeting, at Wrexham; the church had then twenty-seven communicants, and during his pastorate shrank to ten - he does not seem to have been a powerful preacher, though he was a careful administrator. It was a mixed congregation, of Independents and open-communion Baptists, and Jenkins made a practice of 'dedicating' infants, even when their parents were Baptists. However, in 1776 it was decided that whenever Jenkins's pastorate should expire the church would become officially Baptist - the trust-deed was redrafted accordingly, in 1778. Jenkins resigned in 1791, but continued to give generous financial support to the Old Meeting in subsequent years. On the death in 1791 of Caleb Evans, he was put in charge of Bristol Baptist Academy, but owing to disagreements he removed in 1793 to be pastor of Blandford Street church in London; thence he went to Walworth, where he died 21 February 1819; he was buried in Bunhill Fields. A firm Calvinist, he published a number of English sermons and essays - list in Price's book mentioned below, pp. 203-5.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Sources

• Hanes y Bedyddwyr yn Nghymru, iii, 200-2, 210, 223-5
• A. N. Palmer, A history of the older nonconformity of Wrexham and its neighbourhood being the third part of 'A history of the town and parish of Wrexham' (1888)
• G. V. Price, The Old Meeting at Wrexham

Additional Links

• VIAF: 33418729
• Wikidata: Q18576589

Published date: 1959

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