Samuel Sharpe (scholar)

Samuel Sharpe (1799–1881) was an English Unitarian banker who, in his leisure hours, made substantial contributions to Egyptology and Biblical translation. Like his literary uncle Samuel Rogers, he was connected for much of his life with Newington Green Unitarian Church.

He was the second son of Sutton Sharpe (1756–1806), brewer, by his second wife, Maria (died 1806), and was born in King Street, Golden Square, London, on 8 March 1799, baptised at St. James's, Piccadilly. His mother was the third daughter of Thomas Rogers, banker, and thus sister to Samuel Rogers, who in addition to banking was also known as a poet and literary gatekeeper. On her death, followed later in 1806 by his father's failure, Samuel and his five siblings were orphaned. They found a second mother in his half-sister Catherine, the only child of his father's first marriage. She was in her early 20s when she was faced with this domestic tragedy and challenge. She resolved to keep the family together, and found them a house in Stoke Newington, on Church Street. His younger sister Mary married legal reformer Edwin Wilkins Field. One of the younger brothers, Daniel Sharpe, achieved eminence as a geologist. At midsummer 1807 Samuel became a boarder in the school of Eliezer Cogan at Higham Hill, Walthamstow. At Christmas 1814 he was taken into the bank run by his two unmarried uncles, Samuel and Henry Rogers, at 29 Clement's Lane, Lombard Street. He remained connected with the firm till 1861, having been made partner in 1824.

Brought up an Anglican, he came gradually to adopt the Unitarian views held by his mother's relatives, a prosperous family of Dissenters at Newington Green, then a village just north of London. In 1821 he joined the South Place Chapel (later the South Place Ethical Society, later still Conway Hall), the congregation of William Johnson Fox in Finsbury, central London. In 1827 he married his first cousin Sarah (born 1796, died 3 June 1851), daughter of Joseph Sharpe, and had six children, of whom two daughters survived him. The girls are described as offering "efficient help" in his studies, for example by tracing Egyptian hieroglyphs, and with their assistance he was able to release "by far the largest collection of hieroglyphical inscriptions ever yet published"

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