Yesterday I wrote about my discovery of new information about John William Bonner (1762 – 1817), the London merchant and official of the Royal Ordnance Office, who was the nephew of my 5thgreat grandmother Elizabeth Holdsworth née Gibson (1733 – 1809). I’ve also discovered another record relating to the Bonner family, one that throws fresh light on their religious affiliation, and perhaps that of my ancestors more generally.
As I noted in yesterday’s post, John William was one of the two sons of Captain Michael Bonner the elder (1733 – 1802) and Frances Gibson (1735 – 1802), the sister of my ancestor Elizabeth. The other son was Michael Bonner the younger, who would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a ship’s captain. Born in 1768 at Bird Street, Stepney, in 1792 Michael married Eleanor Trantum Sayle at the parish church of St Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey. They would have eight children together, before Michael’s death in 1811, at the age of 43.
Burial record for ‘Master Michael Bonner’
I knew that Michael and Eleanor had a son named Michael christened at the church of St Mary Rotherhithe on 8thJune 1800, but until know I had come across no further records for this child. I’ve now discovered, via Ancestry, a record of the death of ‘Master Michael Bonner…aged 2 years from Rotherhith’ on 17thJune 1802, and his burial on 24thof the same month. However, unlike the child’s baptism, this ceremony did not take place at the local parish church, but at the independent chapel at Collier’s Rents, White Street, in Southwark, in whose register this record appears.
This meeting house had been founded in 1695 and from 1791 its minister was James Knight, a graduate of the Dissenting Academy at Homerton. At that time the chapel was described as ‘a good square brick building with three large galleries, and a burial ground adjoining, of a considerable size’. The chapel was close to the church of St George, Southwark, which was described as Eleanor’s home parish when she married Michael Bonner, so it’s tempting to suppose that the Nonconformist affiliation might have derived from her side of the family, though I’ve yet to find any other members of the Sayle family in the chapel’s register and Eleanor herself was christened at the parish church of St Saviour’s, Southwark.
Collier’s Rents, to the north of White Street, is clearly visible on this extract from Rocque’s map of 1746. The building marked ‘I.M.’ (Independent Meeting?) corresponds to the chapel.
The record from Collier’s Rents chapel is certainly the earliest evidence of Dissent from the Established Church that I’ve found in this branch of the family, since the records for the Gibson family, and before them the Greenes and the Bynes, are solidly Anglican, though in the case of the Bynes with an occasional Puritan bent. In 1763 my ancestor Elizabeth Gibson, the younger Michael Bonner’s aunt, married for a second time, to Yorkshire-born farmer Joseph Holdsworth (1735 – 1795), who was almost certainly from Dissenting stock, and evidence of Nonconformity would emerge in the lives of their children: most obviously in the Baptist affiliation of their son, my 4thgreat grandfather William Holdsworth (1771 – 1827).