Samuel Sharpe

Samuel Sharpe (1799–1881) was an English Unitarian banker who, in his leisure hours, made substantial contributions to Egyptology and Biblical translation. Background He was the second son of Sutton Sharpe (1756–1806), a brewer, with his second wife, Maria Rogers (1771–1806), third daughter of Thomas Rogers, a banker, and was born in King Street, Golden Square, London, on 8 March 1799, and baptised at St. James's, Piccadilly. His elder brother Sutton Sharpe the younger (1797–1843) was a barrister, and friend of Stendhal and Prosper Mérimée. His younger sister Mary married legal reformer Edwin Wilkins Field. One of his younger brothers, William Sharpe (1804–1870) of Highbury, a solicitor, had daughters Maria who married Karl Pearson, Elizabeth (Bessie or Lisa) who married Henry Peyton Cobb as his second wife, and Sarah Lucy who married in 1865 Sydney Courtauld. Daniel Sharpe, another younger brother, was noted as a geologist. Samuel Sharpe's mother Maria was sister to Samuel Rogers, a man of letters and banker. The Rogers family were wealthy Dissenters at Newington Green, then a village just north of London. They had a large house there, sold in 1797 by Samuel Rogers. Samuel and his brother Henry Rogers were partners in a bank, at 29 Clement's Lane, Lombard Street. It traded under different names down the years: Welch & Rogers in 1766, it became Welch, Rogers, Olding & Rogers in 1785. After a merger in 1811 it was known as Rogers, Towgood & Co., or Rogers, Towgood, Olding & Co. The merger was with the bank trading as Langston, Towgood, Cazalet & Co. (or Langston, Towgood, Boycott & Forester, also of Clement's Lane), and involved John Towgood (1757–1837) who married Martha Rogers, sister of Maria, Samuel and Henry Rogers. Samuel Rogers headed the new bank. Towgood was a slave owner on St Kitts. Sutton Sharpe the elder was a needle-maker, as well as a brewer, and has been called a dilettante. Through Maria he was able to move in literary circles. He was also on good terms with artists: John Bewick, James Barry, John Flaxman, John Opie and Martin Archer Shee. He married, firstly, Catharine Purchas, who died in 1791. He remarried in 1795.