Rev William Richard Rogers 1837

The Minutes of Conference 1837 show that William Richard was to work in Morant Bay in Jamaica assisting the Reverend James Atkins.

I had assumed that William Richard would have sailed to Jamaica so that he was there ready to start in September 1837. That did not happen.

I found it surprising that the couple had been married about eight years before their first known child was born. I tried a ‘Wild Card’ hunt by assuming that they had had a child in Birmingham in 1835.

They did have a son before 1841, born not in Birmingham but in the West Indies. A record of his birth and baptism was found on “Ancestry” in their Non-Conformist records. 

The child called Richard Naylor Rogers was born in Parham, in the Parish of St.Peter’s, on the Island of Antigua, on 28th April 1837. His parents names are given and also the parents of Mary Ann, so there is no doubt that this is the correct family. Richard Naylor was baptised by the Reverend Jesse Pilcher in the Wesleyan Chapel in Parham on 28th June 1837. His birth details were registered in London on 13th July 1838.

I have found that Reverend Jesse Pilcher, according to the Minutes of Conference 1836 was stationed in Dominica and for 1837 in Antigua.