Family History Sideline: Rev Joseph Ivemey

This is the frontispiece and title page of a book which has been in the family for over 150 years.

Published in 1835, it recounts the life and writings of Rev Joseph Ivemey, who was the Pastor of the Church Charles and Alice Gaze belonged to in London, but some years before they were associated with it.

Joseph Ivemey was Alice's uncle; exactly how they were related I have not been able to find out.

He was born in Hampshire in 1773, and lived in the town of Ringwood, which had been the home of his family for several generations. Ringwood is between Bournemouth and Salisbury. His parents were Charles and Sarah. Charles was a tailor, and started teaching his trade to Joseph, the eldest child, as soon as he was old enough.
Sarah was a positive influence as contrasted with Charles, who was inclined to hit the bottle.

It may have been for that reason that Joseph was sent to live with his maternal aunt and uncle in the same town, and of the same trade, to learn more effectively. The aunt was connected with a Baptist Church, to which she introduced Joseph, who soon made plenty of young friends among the congregation, and eventually committed himself to the Christian life-style and to this particular church.

Before long it became clear to Joseph and others that he was a leader; he had already excelled at sports with his friends. He was persuaded to look towards becoming a minister and eventually took up a pastorate at Portsea, a suburb of Portsmouth.

After brief periods there and at one or two other churches, he was called to lead the Eagle Street (Red Lion Square) Baptist Church in London, where he served until his death in 1834, aged 60.

He was involved in a range of national movements: the anti-slavery drive which took the time of his whole working life to progress to an act of Parliament to ban slavery; he was a member of the Council of the Baptist Union; he wrote a three-volume history of the English Baptists; he was the Secretary of the Irish Baptist Society, which supported Baptist churches and clergy in  Ireland; he was one of the leaders of the Baptist Missionary Society in England; and he took a vigorous part in some of the debates running during his time, both inside and outside the church.

Ivemey also wrote a life of John Bunyan, and a sequel to Pilgrim's Progress.

One of his long-time friends and colleagues was Rev Andrew Fuller, pastor of the church at Kettering, Northamptonshire, and of the first missionaries sent by the Baptist Missionary Society to India. This was the town where later Julia Goodwin (who married Fred) grew up and went to Sunday School. No doubt Alice Gaze and Julia Gaze had some conversations over their lifetime about the connection between these two ministers about whom they had heard so much from their families.