Richard B. Sherring

Richard B. Sherring was a  man of considerable wealth. Sherring, along with his wife, Hester, joined Broadmead Baptist Church in Bristol on  6 January 1820; by 1825 he had become a deacon. He was a prominent Baptist layman in denominational affairs and a generous benefactor of the BMS, contributing £100 in April 1842, another £100 in November of that year to the Kettering collection of the Jubilee Fund, and £1000 to the Bristol collection that same month. At a Jubilee meeting in Bristol in June 1842, in which William Knibb was the featured speaker, Sherring pledged £500 toward the new mission in Western Africa. In September 1842, he gave £150 for the purchase of the proposed schooner for the work in Fernando Po. At another meeting in London in January 1843, Sherring further donated another £100, for a total in less than one year of £1950. He recognized literary greatness as well, for in 1844 he also donated to the BMS a bust of Robert Hall and John Foster, the complete works of Milton, and two volumes from the library of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He served on the committee of the Bath Society for Aged Ministers in 1844 as well as that of the Baptist Colleges and Educational Institutions. As late as 1857 he was serving as an honorary member of the BMS Committee. See Missionary Herald (July 1842), 402; (August 1842), 453; (November 1842), 615; (January 1843), 60; (March 1843), 180; (August 1844), 439; Baptist Magazine 36 (1844), 658, 659; 49 (1857), 803. Some letters between Sherring and Andrew Leslie can be found at Bristol Baptist College Library, shelfmark Z.c.29. (My thanks to Roger Hayden for information on Sherring’s Broadmead membership.)