Born in Boston

Baptism Certificate of John Rodgers Jewitt
obtained by our Dad when he traveled to England and visited St. Botolph's in 1973. 

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​     A few posts ago, we promised that Boston would become important later in
  our Jewitt family history -- well here it is!  John R. was born and baptised in Boston, 
  at St. Botolph's -- a beloved parish church boasting an ornate wooden interior
  and a famous lantern tower. 

St. Botolph's Church in Boston, Lincolnshire, England

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       According to our family tree, John's father, Edward Juitt (Jewitt) was from
    our familiar  stomping grounds of Grimsby, but Catherine Rodgers, John's mother
   (whose name he was given as his middle name), was from Boston.  So she had to
   have been the motivation for Edward's move to Boston.  Perhaps also he hoped to
   get a change of scenery, and start anew following the death of his previous wife,
   Margaret.   But sadly, Catherine was to die as well -- as John relates to us in the
   opening lines of his journal:
 
         "I was born in Boston, a considerable borough town in Lincolnshire, in
         Great Britain, on the 21st of May, 1783.  My father, Edward Jewitt, was by
         trade a blacksmith, and esteemed among the first in his line of business in
         that place.  At the age of three years I had the misfortune to lose my mother,
         a most excellent woman who died in child-bed, leaving an infant daugher,
         who, with myself, and an elder brother by a former marriage of my father,
         constituted the whole of our family."
 
   Edward Jewitt married again for a final time, and by all accounts his third wife,
   Anne, was a very kind, affectionate and caring stepmother to John.  In his journal
   he describes her as a widow much younger than his father, "who had been brought
   up in a superior manner, and was an amiable and sensible woman."
 
   So though he was raised in a good supportive family, from his earliest days, John
   had to learn to deal with loss as well as change.  And as we will see in the next
   post, he developed the character necessary to handle it well.

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Ornate interior of St. Botolph's lantern tower.