John Harris

John Harris (1727?-1801) joined Broadmead in 1745, and served as a deacon from 1760 to 1801. For many of those years he served as chairman of the deacons. He wife was a cousin of Hugh Evans, his pastor for many years at Broadmead. Harris was a prominent merchant (a sugar refiner in Lewin’s Mead) and alderman for the City of Bristol, serving twice as Sheriff (1776, 1778) and once as Mayor (1790). John Ryland said of Harris, “When he was chief magistrate of this city in 1790, he was enabled to discharge the duties of that office with great fidelity and respectability, and ever since he maintained the highest character for diligence and uprightness in his civil capacity.” As a sugar refiner, he was closely connected to the West Indies market, fueled in Bristol by the slave trade. As a result, he eventually opposed his pastor, Caleb Evans, during the slave trade debate in Bristol in the late 1780s. See “Sketch of Dr. Ryland’s Sermon, preached at Broadmead, Bristol, May 31, 1801; Occasioned by the Decease of John Harris, Esq. One of the Aldermen of that City,” in John Rippon, ed., Baptist Annual Register , vol. 4 (1801-02), 609; Timothy Whelan, “Robert Hall and the Bristol Slave-Trade Debate of 1787-1788,” Baptist Quarterly 38 (1999-2000), 212-224; Roger Hayden, “Caleb Evans and the Anti-Slavery Question,” Baptist Quarterly 39 (2001-2002), 4-14; Sidney C. Hall and Harry Mowvley. Tradition and Challenge: The Story of Broadmead Baptist Church, Bristol, from 1685 to 1991. (Bristol: Broadmead Baptist Church, 1991),  40.