John Newton b: 24.7.1725 – d: 21.12.1807 an English Anglican clergyman, Captain of slave ships and investor of trade. Served as a sailor in the Royal Navy for a period after forced recruitment.

He went to sea at a young age working on slave ships in the slave trade for several years. In 1745, he himself became a slave of Princess Peye, a woman of the Sherbro people. He was rescued, returned to sea and the trade, becoming Captain of several slave ships. After retiring from active seafaring, he continued to invest in the slave trade. Some years after experiencing a conversion to Christianity, Newton later renounced his trade and became a prominent supporter of abolitionism. He was ordained as a Church of England clergyman and served as parish priest at Olney, Buckinghamshire, for two decades. He also wrote hymns, including ‘Amazing Grace’.

He lived to see the British Empire’s abolition of the African slave trade in 1807, just months before his death.

In 1767 poet William Cowper moved to Olney. He worshipped in Newton's church and collaborated with him on a volume of hymns; it was published as Olney Hymns in 1779.

Newton's wife Mary Catlett died in 1790, after which he published Letters to a Wife (1793), in which he expressed his grief. Plagued by ill health and poor eyesight, He died in London and . buried beside his wife in St. Mary Woolnoth in London. Both were reinterred at the Church of St Peter and Paul in Olney in 1893.

The town of Newton in Sierra Leone is named after him. To this day his former town of Olney provides philanthropy for the African town.