Members of the Southcomb family served as rectors of the parish of Rose Ash in Devon almost uninterruptedly from 1675 until 1948. Only those represented in the Southcomb Family Papers are described here.
Lewis Southcomb (1655-1733), the first Southcomb to hold Rose Ash, refused to take the Oath of Allegiance to William and Mary in 1688, despite offers of preferment, and was deprived of the rectorship as a Nonjuror, but was restored after the death of James II in 1701. He was a noted preacher, and at least two of his sermons were printed in London during his lifetime.
John Southcomb (1758-1822), received his B.A. from Exeter College, Oxford in 1780 and married Susannah Granger in the same year. He succeeded his father John as rector of Rose Ash in 1788, also serving as patron of King's Nympton, and died in 1822.
John Southcomb (1784-1840), was the eldest son of John Southcomb and Susannah Granger. He received his B.A. in 1813 from Exeter College, Oxford and married Sarah Hamilton, the daughter of the Rev. William Hamilton of Donegal in 1817. Never rector of Rose Ash, to which his younger brother Edmund Hamilton (1792-1854) was preferred in 1822, John served as curate of Minehead and of St. Wenn in Cornwall until his death in 1840. John's son, John Ladaveze Hamilton Southcomb (1817-1886), received his B.A. from All Souls' College, Oxford in 1840 and succeeded to the rectorship of Rose Ash on the death of his childless uncle Edmund in 1854.
From the guide to the Southcomb family papers, 1696-1877, 1818-1852, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
