Ebenezer Foster 

Ebenezer Foster (1777-1852) of Anstey Hall, Trumpington, was the founder of Foster’s Bank and Mayor of Cambridge (1836-1837) and High Sheriff (1849). He was the son of Richard Foster (d. 1790), also of Cambridge and a deacon at St. Andrew’s Street. His sister, Martha, was a spinster who later moved to St. Neots. Ebenezer married Elizabeth Finch (1786-1877), daughter of Charles Finch, Esq., of Cambridge, in 1804.  She was a regular member of the church, but Ebenezer was only a hearer. Foster was present when Mrs. Jennings’s house in Bridge Street was attacked by a mob after a political meeting in Cambridge in April 1797.  In a letter to John Greene, 4 May 1832, he writes: “I was with the party who escorted Benjamin Flower, which we did almost at the hazard of our lives ... When the mob broke in Miss Jennings’s shutter, Dr. [Olinthus] Gregory, with myself, were on the steps.  Dr. G. made a speech to the mob, and I myself can swear I saw Mr. [Robert] Hall in the shop, with the pestle in his hand, ready, I verily believe, to knock any man down that entered the shop with an hostile intention.” (Greene xiii). His son, also named Edward Foster, contributed £20 to the BMS Jubilee Fund in December 1842; the elder Foster contributed £100. Seven other Fosters contributed to the BMS at that time. Fosters had been leading members at St. Andrew’s Street and prominent public figures in Cambridge for several generations by 1842. See John Greene, Reminiscences of the Rev. Robert Hall, A. M., late of Bristol, and Sketches of his Sermons preached at Cambridge prior to 1806 (London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, 2nd.  ed., 1834), xiii; Church Book: St. Andrew’s Street Baptist Church, Cambridge 1720-1832 (London: Baptist Historical Society, 1991), 133, 142,173; Missionary Herald (January 1843), 67; Richard Norman Finch and Evelyn Sheila Finch,  Our Finch Family and Others Mainly from Worcestershire and Cambridgeshire ...  ([n.d.]: Published by R. N. and E. S. Finch, 1993), 59-60.