Joseph Hughes (Baptist)
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Joseph Hughes (1769–1833) was an English Baptist minister, best known for his role as a founder of the British and Foreign Bible Society.[1]
He was born in Holborn, London to Thomas Hughes and his wife Sarah Brier, a Baptist. In a large family, many died young, and Joseph as an infant was put out to nurse at Enfield Chase.[1]
When young, Hughes was sent from his family in London as boarder at the school run in Darwen, Lancashire by the Presbyterian minister Robert Smalley, in 1778. From there he moved in 1780 to Rivington, and the grammar school run by John Norcross.[1][2][3] His father died when he was ten. He was baptised in London in 1784, by Samuel Stennett.[1] From this point his education was supported by the Trust of John Ward, set up for young Dissenters, Baptists preferred, aged from 14 to 18. Through Stennett, Hughes went first to the Bristol Baptist Academy in 1794, and then in 1787 to King's College, Aberdeen, where he graduated M.A, in 1790. He then spent a short period at Edinburgh University.[1][4]
In 1791 Hughes became a classics tutor, and assistant to Caleb Evans, at the Bristol Baptist Academy. Evans died shortly afterwards. Hughes then ran the academy, for a year and a half.[1] Among his pupils there was John Foster.[5] Hughes at this period joined the social circle of Joseph Cottle, beginning a long friendship.[6]