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John Rogers

hi viv ..... how strange that i was down digbeth way yesterday snapping away with my camera taking pics of the unculvated river rea etc....john rogers bust maybe lost forever but there is a blue plaque for him on the bull ring trading estate building which was the site of st johns church..the alter of the church was about 17 feet in front of the plaque so most likely where i was standing

lyn

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.4...4!1szg7eWSgTXaiFRYMu8NC1DQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656


DIGBETH AREA JULY 2017 030.JPG
 
hi viv your post 5 re john rogers...how strange that i was down digbeth way yesterday snapping away with my camera taking pics of the unculvated river rea etc....john rogers bust maybe lost forever but there is a blue plaque for him on the bull ring trading estate building which was the site of st johns church..the alter of the church was about 17 feet in front of the plaque so most likely where i was standing

lyn

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.4...4!1szg7eWSgTXaiFRYMu8NC1DQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656


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Thanks for the update Lyn. At least there's recognition of the man. Not too surprising that the bust has vanished from St John's Church with the WW2 damage followed by the demolition of the church. Viv.
 
hi viv i guess its always possible that the bust was destroyed during WW2 bombing of the church...

lyn
 
Some info attached below about the John Rogers bust from when it was first conceived in 1870 and its location after WW2. Seems Aston Church or St Basils in Deritend are possible locations. There’s a bust and a commemorative tablet - somewhere in either of those churches. Viv.
 

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Hi Viv and Lyn,
Thanks to your detective work, I have been able to track down the bust. It's in Aston Parish Church, properly called the Church of St Peter and St Paul, in Witton Lane, B6 6QA. I found pictures and a description at this website: www.speel.me.uk/sculptplaces/bhamaston.htm if you wanted to check it out. I'll be going to see it for myself soon, but it's just good to know it has not been lost.

Les
 
This was the bust in situ when it was in St Johns Church, Deritend. Image from the Shoothill site. Viv.

8C6C2C12-050C-459B-972E-2041BC16A8B3.jpeg
 
Some more information about John Rogers, from "Book makers of Old Birmingham". His mother was Margaret Wyatt, the daughter of a prominent Deritend tanner, who married John Rogers, a ?Deritend lorrimer before 1511. He was educated at Deritend School, and worked with William Tyndale and produced the first authorised English version of the bible. In 1536-7 he married Adriana de Weyden and in his fathers will in 1540 he is described as a priest living in foreign parts. After the death of Henry VIII he was able to return to England and probably largely lived in Deritend till May 1550, when he obtained preferment to London. During that time he received a copy of Weighing of the Interim, from its author Philip Melancthon, and proceeded to translate it and to publish it in London, the first work of a Birmingham man printed in England.
Below is a painting of John Rogers.
John Rogers.jpg
 
I have included the life of John Rogers in my book published last week, called 'Forgotten Brummies'.
I became interested in the local history of Birmingham at first through the blue plaques erected in Birmingham which commemorate significant figures from the history of the city. This developed into a collection of short biographies of twenty nine people who have significantly contributed to the development of Birmingham from Roman settlement, to medieval hamlet, to growing town at the centre of the Industrial Revolution, to the second largest city in the UK. Most of these people are not known to Brummies today, so the book is called: ‘Forgotten Brummies: the men and women who shaped today’s Birmingham, who are now largely forgotten’. The book includes short lives of the following:

  • James Brindley – The Father of the Canals who made water run uphill. Britain’s first civil engineer
  • John Rogers – The first martyr of the Marian persecution
  • William Hutton – Birmingham’s first historian
  • Joseph Priestley – Radical thinker, innovative chemist, discoverer of oxygen, and a dangerous friend to know
  • Thomas Attwood – Radical orator and universal suffrage campaigner, Birmingham’s first MP
  • Josiah Mason – Successful businessman and big hearted philanthropist who improved the lives of thousands of children
  • Peter Thomas Stanford – The former slave who became Birmingham’s first black minister
  • Austen Chamberlain – the least known Chamberlain, who won the Nobel Peace Prize
  • Hilda Lloyd – Creator of the Obstetric Flying Squad and first female president of a Royal College
  • William Lench - The Moor Street tanner whose generosity lives on after five hundred years
  • John Baskerville - The innovative printer whose story did not conclude until one hundred and twenty three years after his death
  • Sampson Lloyd - The local iron master who became a banker whose name lives on in Lloyds Bank
  • John Ash - The founder of Birmingham General Hospital in Summer Lane
  • James Keir - The most famous resident of West Bromwich that nobody knows
  • William Withering - A polymath, a Lunatick, the inventor of digitalis, and the foe of Erasmus Darwin
  • Samuel Galton Junior - The successful gun manufacturer who followed a pacifist religion
  • George Bodington - The pioneering physician who revolutionised the care of tuberculosis
  • William Sands Cox - The determined, or stubborn, surgeon who founded Birmingham’s first Medical School, and The Queen’s Hospital, later Birmingham Accident Hospital
  • Joseph Sturge – ‘He laboured to bring freedom to the negro slave, the vote to British workmen, and the promise of peace to a war-torn world’
  • Louisa Anne Ryland - The wealthy heiress who did not wish her considerable kindness and philanthropy to be known
  • Joseph Chamberlain - ‘Birmingham’s greatest man’ and ‘the father of modern Birmingham’, ‘the most trusted man in England’ and ‘the first minister of the Empire’
  • John Jaffray - The educational and health care philanthropist who co-founded the Birmingham Post
  • Joseph Sampson Gamgee - The eminent surgeon and pioneer of cleanliness in surgery, who founded the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund, providing access to health care for thousands of poor and working class people
  • Robert Lawson Tait - The often controversial father of modern gynaecology and a driving force in the founding of Birmingham Women’s Hospital
  • Neville Chamberlain – The highest-achieving politician Birmingham has produced, and the most reviled
  • John Sutton Nettlefold – The innovative creator of the Moor Pool Estate and the father of town planning in Britain
  • Harry Gilbert Barling – The accomplished surgeon who planned and opened the expanded General Hospital and ran the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund and the Birmingham Civic Society
  • John Hall-Edwards – The dedicated soldier and doctor who pioneered the use of X-rays in Great Britain, to the benefit of many, but at great personal cost to himself
  • Naughton Dunn – The Scottish surgeon who developed revolutionary orthopaedic operations, particularly on the foot, and helped to establish this field as a separate specialty, as well as being an inspirational clinical teacher.
If anyone would like to purchase a copy, please let me know and I can ensure that it is provided to you. It's £14.95 plus postage and packaging.
 
thanks for the update les and good luck with your new book...gosh we really did have some famous men and women who although may not have originated here they did do their best work in birmingham....just looking down your list i see lawson tait is mentioned...i do find it wonderful that the first property he lived in is still standing at the top of burbury st and lozells road...

lyn
 
Hi Lyn
Many thanks for your reply. Yes, I was amazed to find out such facts about so many people who were largely unknown to me, although I have lived here all my life and felt I was well-informed about my home city. There are many more who could also qualify for bringing to everyone's attention, but that would probably need another book...Their legacy is all around us but sometimes we are so busy, we miss it. I certainly did. Thanks again for your comment.
 
What a tremendously interesting thread to stumble upon...

I am a direct descendant of John Rogers, via America, and very surprised to find myself living in the same part of the world that was once home to one of my most influential ancestors. I have travelled through Deritend every day going to work for years without a clue.

I've been working on my family tree off and on for 25 years in the hope of finding local ancestry, but never expected to find anyone from Brum. Thanks to the posts here, I will be visiting Aston Parish Church and will be having a scrounge through the new library to see if I can find out more about John Rogers.
 
Well...seeing this thread is a strange coincidence to me!

I watch walking videos posted on YouTube most weeks by a man called John Rogers who lives in East London. They are always very interesting and informative about the history of places, mostly around London (where I live now) and the surrounding areas.

When he's been walking in the city he has often mentioned his 'namesake' John Rogers but I had no idea he was originally from Birmingham!
 
Well...seeing this thread is a strange coincidence to me!

I watch walking videos posted on YouTube most weeks by a man called John Rogers who lives in East London. They are always very interesting and informative about the history of places, mostly around London (where I live now) and the surrounding areas.

When he's been walking in the city he has often mentioned his 'namesake' John Rogers but I had no idea he was originally from Birmingham!
Hmm... I wonder if he knows about the branch of his family tree on the wrong side of the pond?
 
Hmm... I wonder if he knows about the branch of his family tree on the wrong side of the pond?
The John Rogers who does the walking isn't actually related to your ancestor - I think he enjoys mentioning him as they have the same name!

There are a number of plaques commemorating him around London, I've seen this one which is in a little park opposite Smithfield Market....
4px-BW84_n0QJGVPszge3NRBsKw-2VcOifrJIjPYFYkOtaCZxxXQ2dBZwcZWpX89m9m9v2vgK4WfwNSg3OAobmXQZkr9Uy...jpg
 
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