Joseph Dent

Joseph Dent (c. 1745-1834) was from Milton, Northamptonshire. He was baptized on the same day as John Ryland, Jr. (13 September 1767) at College Lane in Northampton during the ministry of John Collett Ryland. Dent married Elizabeth Ryland (1754-1820), John Ryland’s sister, who was described by James Culross as “comely in appearance and gracious in spirit.” She operated a school in Northampton between 1793 and 1815 (see ‘Memoir of Mrs. Dent’, Baptist Magazine 13 [1821], 185-88), essentially a continuation of Mrs. Trinder’s Female Academy.  Joseph Dent was “a man of genuine piety, solidity of thought, and promptitude of action—qualities that served him well in his long diaconate” at College Lane, which began in 1777. Frances Ryland records in her diary that Dent died on 22 September 1795. His son, also named Joseph, however, became a leading member of the church and the larger Baptist community in England. In 1812 he served on the BMS Committee. In the summer of 1825, he was instrumental in forming a Baptist church at Milton, consisting of Baptists from Northampton and Roade. See James Culross, The Three Rylands: A Hundred Years of Various Christian Service (London: Elliot Stock, 1897), 24; F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, from 1792 to 1842, 2 vols. (London: T. Ward, and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), 2:221; Ernest A. Payne, College Street Church, Northampton, 1697–1947 (London: Kingsgate Press, 1947), 15.