Rowe was born in Lopen in the county of Somerset, England on September 14, 1788. He trained for the ministry at Bristol Baptist College, whose president then was John Ryland, Baptist minister of Broadmead Church in Bristol and Secretary for ten years of the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS). After completing his studies at Bristol, Rowe offered himself for service on the mission field. BMS accepted him and assigned him to Jamaica.
Rowe has the distinction of being the very first missionary that BMS sent to Jamaica. He landed in Montego Bay on February 23, 1814 together with Sarah, his wife. Little could they have anticipated what awaited them in the country.
This decision to commission Rowe to Jamaica was in response to a request from Moses Baker and George Liele who saw the need for mission workers from Britain, owing to the passage of laws to prevent Black people from preaching and teaching in Jamaica. Rowe was to assist Moses Baker in western Jamaica.
After being received in Montego Bay by Samuel Vaughan, a plantation owner in Jamaica, Rowe proceeded to visit Moses Baker at Flamstead and preached before Baker’s congregation of about 500 at Crooked Spring. Rowe developed a close relationship with Moses Baker and is said to have had a profound influence on Rowe’s son.
After his meeting with Baker, Rowe went to Falmouth where he opened a school for the children of poor people and the enslaved whose owners gave their approval. This was very much in keeping with the tradition of Baptist churches establishing schools, as was the case at the Windward Road Baptist Chapel and the St. John’s Church (now East Queen Street Baptist Church). The school was supposed to help establish Rowe’s character as a responsible dissenting minister. It would also provide some funds to reduce the financial burden the young Jamaica mission imposed on BMS.
In 1814, Rowe rented a house in Falmouth where his congregation met. Meanwhile, his wife, Sarah Rowe continued to struggle with ill health. By May 1816, she had sustained the loss of two infants and her husband was experiencing growing opposition to his work as a preacher.
Soon, James Stewart II, the custos for Trelawny, a lieutenant colonel in the Jamaica Militia, and magistrate in Falmouth, advised Rowe of the many anonymous letters he had received alleging Rowe’s efforts to seduce the enslaved to revolt against their enslavers. Another complainant alleged that, after intercepting Rowe’s letters to England, it was discovered that Rowe had communicated with both a Dr. Whitcalf and William Wilberforce and that he was a spy supplying information to the Antislavery Society in England. Stewart advised Rowe to cease preaching temporarily.
Rowe left Falmouth for Montego Bay where he was to have a meeting with Baker. The meeting did not take place because Rowe fell seriously ill and had to seek immediate medical attention. When he got news of this development, Baker and his wife went speedily to Montego Bay to visit him. By the time they arrived, Rowe was already dead.
Baker was the person who informed BMS of Rowe’s death on June 26, 1816. Rowe and his wife had completed only 28 months in Jamaica. Baker was distraught. He exclaimed:
I have now been labouring these thirty
years in the work of the gospel, and when I reflect how long I have been crying
to the Lord for help, and now this brother came – and a sweeter tempered man I
have never met with – and he is taken away. It seems to put me to a stand. But
“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Rowe was buried in the cemetery attached to the Montego Bay Parish Church on January 27, 1816. Disappointed, Baker feared for the future of the work he had done in St James, but retained confidence in divine providence. Meanwhile, heartbroken, Sarah Rowe returned to England.
John Rowe gave his life to the Baptist cause in Jamaica and he opened the way for other Baptist missionaries to serve sacrificially in the country. It was BMS missionary, James Mann, who gathered up the people who had been influenced by Rowe in Falmouth where he himself served the Baptist group that owed its origins to Moses Baker. Mann organized what is now called the William Knibb Memorial Baptist Church.
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