John Gotch 

John Gotch (1715-1784) and his wife Ann (1719-84) were, along with the Wallises, a prominent family in the congregation at Kettering both before and during the ministry of Andrew Fuller. They were the parents of Thomas Gotch (1749-1806), the wealthy tanner, who would play a key factor in the life of William Carey. He and his wife, also named Ann (1747-1816), joined the church on August 25, 1771 (f. 2), and they appear in several entries in Fuller’s diary. Thomas Gotch was a banker by trade but in 1778 entered the shoe business as a leather tanner (currier), building a substantial business in Kettering (much of it with government contracts) and employing large numbers of local people. In 1785, William Carey, a shoemaker by trade, trudged every two weeks from Moulton to Kettering with a wallet full of shoes for delivery to Gotch’s establishment, returning home with a load of leather sufficient for the next two weeks. Gotch soon promised to pay Carey 10 shillings a week if he would quit his shoemaking and devote his energies to his work as a Baptist minister (he was receiving about 5 shillings a week at that time for his preaching duties). See Ernest A. Payne and A. Rattray Allan, Clipston Baptist Church (Northampton: Billingham & Son, 1932), 8-9.