The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.49 No.3 | December 2022

Member’s article

The Search for Ebenezer Baptist Chapel

The reason for my quest was to identify the parents of Elizabeth ROGERS, my 3rd great grandmother, born in Sherfield English around 1797. She married James NOBLE in Sherfield English in 1818 and died in Salisbury in 1854. I quickly discovered that, apart from her marriage, she had no baptism at St Leonard, Sherfield English, nor in the surrounding parish churches. Nor did the Rogers family bury their loved ones in the parish churchyard. The idea of non-conformity was likely, but I needed to find out more. At about the same time, I linked with a couple of DNA matches who were also descended from Rogers families in Sherfield English. One of these matches, Angela Railton became a helpful and valuable collaborator and we were able to bounce ideas off each other. Angela’s 3rd great grandmother Mary Ann appeared to be the right age to be Elizabeth’s younger sister, making us 5th cousins. We studied the marriage records for the signatures of witnesses and together with DNA evidence, we had a hypothesis of four siblings: Ann, Moses, Elizabeth and Mary Ann Rogers, whose census records declared that they were all born in Sherfield English. Looking for Rogers’ probate records at HRO, I came across the Will of Mark Rogers, “Practitioner of Physic” in Sherfield English. He named 7 children in his Will, which was granted probate in 1781. I found a marriage in Eling to a Sarah WHITE in 1760 which gave me a rough idea of the birthdates of the children, if they were named in order of birth, which is usually the case. They were Mary; Betty; Mark; Moses; John; Sarah and James. Could one of these four brothers be the

mystery father of our four siblings? We needed to find non-conformist records for that part of Hampshire, which is on the Wiltshire border. A quick email to Wiltshire Archives told us that they had no likely Rogers families in their Salisbury Methodist circuit, which included Sherfield English. As we began to build out the trees of the 7 Rogers’ lines, Salisbury and Winchester newspapers referred to marriages performed at Ebenezer Baptist chapel, so I focused on looking for a Baptist chapel. The 1851 Ecclesiastical census, which I downloaded from TNA, was very helpful. The page for Lockerley, which is the next parish to Sherfield English, described a Baptist chapel named Ebenezer, erected in 1752. This was the right time period for Mark and Sarah Rogers to be attending, and possibly to be buried there. William Ross was the Baptist minister in 1851 and average attendance was 53 in the morning and 88 in the afternoon. (Fig 1). It also explained why we had not found infant baptisms, as they are not Baptist practice. When I eventually found the chapel on an old map, it was on Chapel Lane, which ran off Doctors Hill. A good sign that Dr Mark Rogers lived in the area. On the website of Old Hampshire Maps: https://www.oldhampshiremapped.org.uk/ I found the chapel on the C and J Greenwood map of 1826. (Fig 2) Going to Google streetview, I found Chapel Lane and followed it down towards Sherfield English. As I passed Chapel farm, I saw a wall of gravestones in a field. Could this be the site of the 1752 Baptist chapel? (Fig 3) I went to the website of Lockerley village and found the phone number of the present Baptist church. I

118