John Haddon

John Haddon (1744-1818) was from Naseby and Clipston. His wife was the former Elizabeth Clarke (d. 1799) of Market Harborough. Haddon became a Baptist in 1769 through the ministry of William Cole of Long Buckby, about ten miles from Naseby. He married Miss Clarke (also a Baptist) in 1778. In 1782 the Haddon’s joined the Baptist church in Clipston, midway between Naseby and Market Harborough, where he became a deacon. He soon applied for a license to hold services in his house in Naseby, the very house in which Fuller had preached on the day of the above entry in his diary. In 1798 Haddon encouraged the bailiff for his farms, John Chamberlain (1777-1821), to enter the ministry, supporting him for a year at Sutcliff’s academy at Olney and then for three years at Bristol Baptist College in preparation for joining William Carey as a Baptist missionary in India. Around 1800 Haddon returned to the Clipston church, and spent his final three years living in that town. His obituary appeared in the June 1819 issue of the Baptist Magazine. Haddon’s son, John, founded the London publishing firm of John Haddon & Co in 1814, publishing numerous annual reports of the Baptist Missionary Society and other publications during his lifetime. See W. G. Cruft, A History of the Haddons of Naseby (London: John Haddon & Co., 1915), 19, 49-50.