Joanna Southcott [1750-1814], the religious prophetess from Devon, was said to possess supernatural gifts and made prophecies which she wrote down in rhyme.
She had several followers – Southcottians – in the Halifax area of West Yorkshire, including
Some of her followers were members of Sion Congregational Church, Halifax
Lexicographer Peter Gilliver gives much information about the Jowett family's links with Joanna Southcott in his Article Makers of the OED.
For over thirty years, John Marshall Jowett had custody of the most important Southcottian relic of alla sealed wooden box of Joanna Southcott's prophecies, which she had directed should only be opened in the presence of 24 bishops of the Church of England at an unspecified future time of great national crisis.The box had passed to him from his own father, and when he died, in 1898, it passed in turn to John Samuel Jowett.
The box remained in the Jowett family until 1957; its present location is a closely guarded secret
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