Alexander Saunders

Alexander Saunders (1805-1846) was a Baptist layman in London whose brother, John (1806-1859) (after ministering to some churches in London) served as a missionary in Australia, 1834-1848, in loose conjunction with the BMS (he provided his own financial support), the Society being reluctant at that time to sanction mission work among the “non-heathen.”  The younger Saunders opened the first Baptist chapel in Sydney on 23 September 1836 and the church was constituted that December. Always ecumenical in his approach to missions, Saunders also served as the ministerial agent for the LMS in Sydney from 1838 to 1840, which possibly provides some poignancy to his brother’s letter to Angus (see letter 163). In the early 1820s, both brothers became members of the Baptist church at Camberwell, under the ministry of Edward Steane. Letters between the two brothers can be found in the Saunders Letterbook, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. One letter from Alexander to John, dated 17 February 1838, appealing for funds for Baptist churches in Australia, appeared in the Baptist Magazine 30 (1838), 127-128. A letter from John in Sydney appeared in the Missionary Herald (May 1843), 284-285. Saunders had sent £50 from his church for the Jubilee Fund, proposing that “by this act the chain of love is made to encircle the globe: Australia, the last link is enwreathed with Africa, either India, America, and all-beloved home.” Alexander Saunders collected £18 for the BMS in November 1840 and contributed £5 in April 1841. He served as a deacon in the church at Camberwell, an officer for the Bath Society for Aged Ministers, and secretary and treasurer of a fund formed for promoting the sell of the Selection Hymn Book, produced for the benefit of widows and orphans of Baptist ministers. In 1844 the proceeds enabled Saunders to transfer £180 to the fund. See Baptist Magazine 34 (1842), 665; 35 (1843), 655; 38 (1846): 236; 36 (1844): 423; Missionary Herald (January 1841), 45; (July 1841): 371; J. D. Bollen, “English Australian Baptist Relations, 1830-1860,” Baptist Quarterly 25 (1973-1974), 292-296; B. G. Wright, “Saunders, John (1806-1859),” ed. Douglas Pike and John Ritchie, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1967), 2:418; Ken R. Manley, From Woolloomooloo to “Eternity”: A History of Australian Baptists, 2 vols. Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 16.1-2 (Milton Keynes UK: Paternoster Press, 2006) 1:23-35.