By: William J. Stang

In John T. Christian’s A History of the Baptists he begins Volume II, Section III, Chapter I, "The Baptists in Kentucky" page 283 with the following paragraph:

"The discovery and occupation of the Ohio Valley was a matter of the greatest political and religious importance. The issue was, should it be French and Roman Catholic, or English and Protestant? The settlement of Kentucky was the key to this vexed problem. So the occupation of Kentucky became a question of international moment."¹

To the Baptists there was yet another view of religious freedom (their own): the freedom to believe or not to believe, whatever one would believe or not believe, solely between him and his God; totally without any form of state coercion of any kind, along with the freedom to express that faith to others. Even a brief look at colonial America will reveal that though everyone supposedly came to these shores seeking religious liberty, what they established was something altogether different. In Massachusetts you were "free" to be a Congregationalist, in Maryland you were "free" to be a Catholic, in Virginia you were "free" to belong to the Church of England; you paid taxes to support that church in whose jurisdiction you were found, and were under the laws of it’s prelates whether or not you subscribed to it’s system of doctrine or attended it’s services (the latter of which, often you were forced to do). This was the same form of religious tyranny practiced from whence they’d fled!

The Catholic Church tells the uninformed (and even some of those who ought to know better repeat the lie) that the Catholics first founded religious freedom in Maryland. But anyone who will read the Maryland Charter granted by King Charles I of England in 1632 (a Protestant king) and their "Act Concerning Religion" passed in Maryland in 1649 will readily see that at best all they granted was religious toleration, and that, at the direction of King Charles I; for they would not otherwise have been granted a charter by an English king in that era without such a stipulation. Catholicism was still the state church in Maryland and all citizens were taxed to support it. Not only so, but the history of 1200 years prior to this bore testimony to Catholic antagonism and persecution of opposing faiths! To all who will receive it, this is "Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth," whom the Apostle John saw "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus…" in Revelation chapter seventeen, as many of their own scholars admit! By some estimates as many as one-hundred-million were tortured and put to death under her direction throughout the Dark Ages. This is but a matter of historical record that none can successfully deny. It is one thing to tell the truth to others even if they do not like to hear it. It is another thing altogether to put others to death simply because they disagreed with them.

Again, for another example under the Church of England, the colonial legislature of Virginia had early on enacted the following statute:

"Whereas, Sundry and divers persons, out of adverseness to the establishment orthodox religion, or out of new-fangled conceits of their own heretical inventions, refuse to have their children baptized. Be it enacted, that whosoever shall thus refuse when he might carry his child to a lawful minister within the country, shall be fined two hundred pounds of tobacco, half to the informer, and half to the parish." Herring’s Statutes. "The persons against whom this legislative thunder was hurled in the name of God and King Charles II, were Baptists."²

That they bore the brunt of such persecution in every place is easily shown, but few are aware that they were yet so persecuted even up until (and in a few colonies: even beyond) the American Revolution itself, as we shall show.

Historically, only the Baptists, and the few whom they’ve influenced, have contended that there should be no established religion. They themselves have never been a state church. Instances can be shown when church-state establishment was offered to them, but they declined the offer. That form of freedom of religion that finally came to be practiced in America (freedom for all) was eminently a Baptist distinctive, and it was they who were chiefly instrumental in bringing it to pass. The following history is but one illustration thereof:

In establishing the history of Kentucky Baptists and Bryan Station Baptist Church in particular, we should first like to go back into the colony of Virginia from whence came the men who came organizing churches. Let us turn our attention to Orange County, Virginia just ten years before the American Revolution, the years 1765-66, to when the man Lewis Craig was converted under the preaching of Samuel Harris.³ Contrary to the revisionist history of the modern Southern Baptist historians who have all departed from the doctrines which Southern Baptists once believed and thus must rewrite their history to cover up the fact, the Baptists of those days were not all wild-eyed Congregational "Separatists" who believed in the easy-believism of modern Southern Baptists and denied the principles of church authority (Baptist church succession, and perpetuity) just baptizing one another and themselves upon a whim without church authority. To the contrary, John T. Christian (a Southern Baptist who wrote as recently as 1926) tells of men like Elder Shubal Sterns, Daniel Marshall, Nicholas Bedgewood, Benjamin Stirk, and Samuel Harris "whose labors were wonderfully blessed in Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia;" and he is very careful in these places to point out that these men went out of their way to get scriptural baptism, training, and ordination from existing Baptist churches before they ever came south from New England to do mission work.⁴ Men saved out of Congregational churches during the Great Awakening made manifest that they were children of light in that they followed light. It was not without cause that George Whitefield said, "all of my chickens have become ducks" when he referred to all his converts seeking more water than just mere sprinkling could afford. And to whom could they seek but to they who practiced scriptural immersion?

And contrary to the easy-believism of modern Southern Baptists we read that Lewis Craig’s:  ".. great pressure of guilt induced him to follow the preachers from one meeting to another. And when preaching ended, he would rise up in tears, and loudly exclaim that he was a justly condemned sinner, and with loud voice warn the people to fly from the wrath to come, and except they were born again, with himself, they would all go down to hell. While under his exhortation, the people would weep and cry aloud for mercy. In this manner, his ministry began before himself had hope of conversion, and after relief came to him, he went on preaching a considerable time, before he was baptized, no administrator being near…"⁵

In which quote, we see that Samuel Harris did not try to get a quick and meaningless profession of faith out of Lewis Craig, but he just preached the Word and left the results to God. And when Lewis Craig was converted he got the real thing. It was not the "just make a decision" evangelism that so many practice today, that once made means less to them than their membership in the "flower of the month" or "compact-disc of the month" club. These converts forsake the house of God before they would forsake gardening or some other worldly pleasure. Their teachers "compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves." (Matt. 23:15). With a false profession they inoculate them against ever seeing their need of true salvation, the kind that these men had; for the men that we shall speak of did not lay down the banner of Christ, but bore it high, and served Him the rest of their lives. These men had a salvation that was real! It made a change in their lives. And they never got over it. God’s salvation is effectual!

We also see in the account of Lewis Craig’s conversion that Samuel Harris, at that time unordained, did not believe that he had the authority to baptize; and even after the Craigs were converted they were not baptized until scriptural authority could be obtained. Here again, J. H. Spencer (another Southern Baptist who published his History of Kentucky Baptists in 1885) is very careful to show us what Southern Baptists used to believe. Long before J. R. Graves began publishing The Tennessee Baptist in 1846, the principles of Landmarkism can easily be seen as predating the coining of the term "Old Landmarkism;" even as they have already been seen here in all the names of the men already mentioned needing and obtaining scriptural church authority in their baptisms and ordinations. Today’s Southern Baptists who like to ridicule J. R. Graves for what he believed ought to read what J. H. Spencer (who was a contemporary of J. R. Graves) says about him.⁶ He clearly tells us at that time that all Southern Baptists believed what J. R. Graves believed. Out of sixteen Baptist newspapers in the South only one was opposed to the principles of Old Landmarkism.⁷ Today they are all opposed! For one reason and one reason alone: They want to accept and be accepted by the religious world at large. They have chased after the Old Whore and mingled with her harlot daughters (Revelation Chapter 17).

Today they ridicule The Trail of Blood history of the Baptists⁸ as "too simplistic," and use textbooks that teach the Catholic view of church history instead. In other words, they give the history of the world’s churches and churchmen, and not that of the Lord’s! Then they rationalize it by saying that this is the history of "Christianity" as opposed to that of the Lord’s churches (as though the counterfeit and counterpart and that which is the total antithesis of Christianity could be the real thing!). The very college that was under the very church that for years published The Trail of Blood history by J. M. Carroll was itself practicing such deception as this before its recent timely demise. They allude to perceived errors in The Trail of Blood (which we frankly cannot find), errors, which if true, would change nothing of the overall teaching of that book; and use these to "suggest" a "necessary" "revision". We shudder to think of the results of such. For they deal with these things even as those who would "correct" the Word of God in our day with all their new translations. God’s people have always let God’s truths correct them, but the world is full of men who would "correct" God. I speak not of the history as infallible, but as the tendency of some to do the same therewith. They brush aside the first view of history which represents volumes of libraries and lifetimes of research masterfully condensed to a few score pages for the convenience of the reader labeling it "too simplistic," just to embrace a bald faced lie bulging and burdened with thousands of pages of spin-doctored history to conceal the lie. They spin a complicated yarn that none can follow but insist that all believe with no proof whatsoever. The truth is too simple for them to believe. Their Southern Baptist teachers have told them the truth is "too simplistic" because they don’t believe it, as evidenced by the fact they don’t practice it. And they who once believed it have bought the lie, believing man rather than God.

This would be like giving the history of Mormonism and calling it the history of Christianity! True Baptists know better than that. Catholicism is a man-made religion, which is the primary mark of a cult. It was started by a man: Emperor Constantine in the 4^th Century. It is the first of the cults masquerading as Christianity. It places tradition and the teachings of men on a par with the Word of God, another chief mark of a cult (the history books these Baptists use to teach church history today give the history of those men, not the men of God!). Catholicism has a central earthly hierarchy to whom its adherents are duty bound to subscribe (another mark of a cult). They teach salvation by works (another mark), they claim special revelation as divine authority for their man-made teachings (when the Pope speaks "ex-cathedra") (another)… How could people who call themselves Baptists be so deceived? A multitude of Southern Baptist writers of just a generation past could be produced to prove that they were not always so deceived. They have been deceived only in their own apostasy.

Let it be said here however, that the Baptists have never been against the Catholics as a people, but against that system of doctrine that enslaves and misleads them. They have never sought to do them bodily harm, as has been done unto themselves, but have ever prayed that the Lord would give them spiritual sight and the peace of knowing the Savior, God’s free pardon of sin. To this end we have always preached and published truth, believing that only voluntary obedience thereunto would be of any value to anyone. State coerced religion avails no one any good. If a man will not believe God, he will have none of what God has. If what he believes is merely the teachings, traditions and superstitions of men he is indeed most pitiful: to be pitied and helped and not to be harmed.

Of the Southern Baptists themselves, volumes of many of their own writers of but a century ago prove that Southern Baptists have departed from the historical and Biblical faith which they once believed. The Southern Baptists followed just two steps behind the Northern Baptists in this departure. There is only a few Independent Missionary Baptist churches left that still believe what the old Baptists believed. And many who call themselves "Independents" are in truth "Fellowship" and "Association" Baptists and no more independent than Convention Baptists; and in most cases, no more sound in the faith either. But that is not the sole purpose of this article. Let us return to the walk of true Baptists who stayed in the path they once believed; let us go on to see what Lewis Craig’s faith caused him to do.

Because of the oppression of established religion (as in church-state religion) the instances of persecution upon the Baptists even just in America alone could be a lifelong study in itself. From the 1600’s, even on up into the first few decades of the 1800’s in some of the New England states (being some of the last to let go of church-state establishment), the Baptists were always they who received the brunt of such persecution, as even the Scriptures foretold (Matt. 24:7-12, Matt. 5:10-12, John 16:1-4, John 15:18-20, II Tim. 3:12, etc.; we should look in history to see the fulfilling of what was foretold!). In the last two thousand years as many as one hundred million Baptists have been martyred for their faith by order of established religion. Many more have had their property and livelihood and well being taken away. It is not with any wish to belittle the sacrifices and sufferings of others that we must continue on with Lewis Craig alone, but to establish the object of our purpose we must limit ourselves to his story; for all of us since the American Revolution have been the beneficiaries thereof.

Lewis Craig suffered numerous imprisonments in the decade after his conversion to Christ. Each is a story in itself. Such as the time he was indicted by the grand jury "for holding unlawful conventicles, and preaching the gospel contrary to law." He addressed the jury:

"Gentlemen: I thank you for your attention to me. When I was about this courtyard, in all kinds of vanity, folly and vice, you took no notice of me; but when I have forsaken all the vices, and am warning men to forsake, and repent of their sins, you bring me to the bar as a transgressor. How is all this?

John Waller, who was at this time an exceedingly wicked man, was one of the jury. He was so deeply impressed by the meekness of Mr. Craig, and the solemnity of his manner, that he did not recover from the awful impression until he found peace in Jesus, about eight months afterwards. He subsequently became one of the most distinguished Baptist ministers of his generation, and, in turn, endured great persecution."⁹

Within just a short time after this John Waller as well as Lewis Craig and others were being hauled before the court on similar charges.

It is said that during these imprisonments Lewis Craig and his brethren preached from the jail house windows as crowds gathered to hear what the commotion was all about. It is said that more were converted to Baptist views during those imprisonments than in the decades before. Such has the persecution of the saints served the Lord’s purpose.

On one occasion Lewis Craig, his brother Joseph Craig, and Aaron Bledsoe were arrested for preaching to those walking and riding horseback along the Virginia turnpike. They were thrown in Fredericksburg county jail, and for the day of their arraignment we turn to S. H. Ford’s account:

"They had been indicted for preaching the gospel of the Son of God in the colony of Virginia. The clerk was reading the indictment in a slow and formal manner; when he pronounced the crime with emphasis: "For preaching the Gospel of the Son of God in the colony of Virginia," a plainly dressed man who had just rode up to the court house entered, and took his seat within the bar. He was known to the court and lawyers, but a stranger to the mass of spectators, who had gathered on the occasion. This was Patrick Henry, who on hearing of this prosecution, had rode some fifty or sixty miles from his residence in Hanover county, to volunteer his services in their defense. He listened to the further reading of the indictment with marked attention, the first sentence of which had caught his ear was, "For preaching the Gospel of the Son of God." When it was finished, and the prosecuting attorney had submitted a few remarks, Henry arose, reached out his hand and received the paper, and addressed the Court:

The Court and audience were now wrought up to the most intense pitch of excitement. The face of the prosecuting attorney was pallid and ghastly, and he appeared unconscious that his whole frame was agitated with alarm; while the judge, in a tremulous voice, put an end to the scene, now becoming excessively painful, by the authoritative declaration, "Sheriff, discharge those men."¹⁰

Mark you, this was just before the American Revolution. The flames of freedom burned bright. Few are aware of the Baptist participation, the letters of encouragement written by their churches and their associations to the American founding fathers (which letters we still have – they are but a part of the public record), the support, the encouragement given, the ranks they filled in the Revolutionary Army. They had never fought to encroach themselves to establish church-states to "lord it" over others, but in defense of a state that would establish freedom for all – for this they fought.

Most every established state church preached against the patriots (contrary to what they have in latter times claimed) (one need only to answer the question: from whence came the Tories?). As a result, the established Church of England was all but destroyed, it’s church doors closed, it’s clergy largely fled by the end of the Revolution.¹¹ And to rebuild after the Revolution (and to this very day in America) they have taken the name "Episcopalian" for this very reason: to disassociate themselves from the name of England.

The Catholics were in disarray, their hierarchy opposed the Revolution, the Papacy having just been given the favor of King George III as he sought ever wider alliances against freedom. "The Quebec Act was passed by Parliament, June 1774; the effect of which was to make Canada a Roman Catholic province."¹² Now British, since recently won from the French, it was to be the fourteenth British colony.

The British had gained the entire French Empire in North America as a result of their final victory in the French and Indian Wars in 1763, in which the colonists themselves had played a major part in the service of the king. Canada was now under British control. The question has to be asked: "Why didn’t Canada join in with the American Revolution? The answer lies in the fact that our founding fathers were highly distrustful of the Papacy, having witnessed at a closer range in the course of history the treachery and subterfuge of Papal politics for hundreds of years. There was no institution on the face of the earth more opposed to the principles of liberty and freedom than the Catholic Church. Not only so, but the French Canadian Catholics chose even to stay with a British sovereign if he would guarantee their church-state establishment. What strange bedfellows these became! Across the Atlantic "there was not a prominent Roman Catholic in Great Britain who did not endorse the war against America."¹³ Yet the people of England solemnly protested the Quebec Act of 1774. The Crown was asked not to sign it. There were many riots in England.

The American Congress, October 21, 1774, sent an Address to the people of Great Britain. It not only gives the attitude of the Americans in general; but in particular is clear upon the religious side of the controversy. Altogether it is a fearless and plainspoken expression of convictions. It was signed by George Washington and many others. At the risk of length some of the statements are here quoted:

"We think the legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the (English) constitution, to establish a religion, fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets, or to erect an arbitrary form of government, in any quarter of the globe. Those rights we, as well as you, deem sacred; and yet, sacred as they are, they have with many others, been repeatedly and flagrantly violated.

At the conclusion of the late war (The French and Indian War), a war rendered glorious by the abilities and integrity of a

Minister to whose efforts the British Empire owes its safety and its fame: At the conclusion of the war which was succeeded by an inglorious peace, formed under the auspices of a Minister of principles and of a family unfriendly to the Protestant cause and inimical to liberty: We say, at this period and under the influence of that man, a plan for the enslaving of your fellow subjects in America was concerted, and has been ever since pertinaciously carried into execution.

Nor mark the progression of the ministerial plan for enslaving us. Well aware that such hardy attempts to take our property from us, to deprive us of that valuable right of trial by jury, to seize our persons and to carry us for trial to Great Britain, to blockade our ports, to destroy our charters, and to change our form of government, would occasion great discontent in the Colonies, which might produce opposition to these measures, (here now they get to the point of the present address) an act was passed to protect, indemnify and screen from punishment, such as might be guilty even of murder, in endeavoring to carry their oppressive edicts into execution; and by another act the Dominion of Canada is to be extended, modeled and governed, as by being disunited from us, detached from our interests, by civil as well as religious prejudices, that by their numbers daily swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe, and by their devotion to administration so friendly to their religion, they might become formidable to us, and on occasion be fit instruments, in the hands of power, to reduce the free Protestant Colonies to the same state of slavery with themselves.

Nevertheless, the law was passed and signed by the Crown. Potentially, this was total Catholic church-state supremacy as modeled on the European plan, where Catholic dominance in Catholic countries left the Catholic hierarchy in control of the direction of Legislative and Judicial penalties. This had led to the infamous Inquisition, which, as the Spanish Inquisition, was operating even then, and had been already operating with impunity for over three-hundred years. All the world had heard the horror stories of random torture and execution, unwarranted search and seizure of life and property without warning or just cause. This was not just some stale bit history of days gone by. This was the current daily news. Our Forefathers were well aware of it. These were living – breathing human beings who right at that very moment were undergoing indescribable sufferings as their very lives were being snuffed out on but a different part of the globe than what you happened to be on, for doing nothing more but to believe differently than those in charge, or even to be suspected of it. Americans today may be ignorant of history, but in that day they were not ignorant of current affairs. Foreign sailors from non-Catholic countries who perchance were forced to land on Spanish soil feared for their lives. And any and all who made it out again had stories to tell and gratitude to express for their safety. It was the "iron curtain" of that age, and behind it was bred superstition and ignorance in a medium of fear.

John Adams, afterwards President of the United States, writing to the President of Congress in an official manner, August 4, 1770, said:

"The Court of Rome, attached to ancient customs, would be one of the last to acknowledge our independence, if we were to solicit it. But Congress will probably send a Minister to his Holiness (?), who can do them no service, upon condition of receiving a Catholic legate in return; or, in other words, an ecclesiastical tyrant, which, it is to be hoped, the United States will be too wise ever to admit into their territories (Adams, Works, VII.)."¹⁵

Not until Ronald Reagan did America give an emissary of the Pope full diplomatic status. There is plenty of evidence that our Founding Fathers knew the danger full well. Catholicism would only be allowed as an equal choice in a free society. Nevertheless, the Quebec Act was passed and signed by the Crown, and all the power of the Papacy was arrayed against this emerging nation. Only the distance of an ocean between and the grace of God that put it there would allow freedoms budding flower space to flourish.

The record is clear: the Baptists alone consistently supported the Revolution. They alone could see a freedom within their reach that they alone had never hitherto enjoyed. Even as they were being persecuted they threw themselves into the battle. Of this time Claude G. Bowers, the secular biographer of Thomas Jefferson said, "The arrest of the Baptists, the storm troops of democracy in Virginia, became the favorite outdoor sport."¹⁶ At one time as many as thirty-seven Baptist preachers were in jail in Virginia for preaching without a license issued by the established church. Thus, even while they were hated of all, they became the "storm troops" and champions for freedom and democracy for all. Of this time "A brilliant youth, home in Virginia from Princeton University, witnessed this crude persecution with dismay and disgust. He wrote a friend back at Princeton:

"I want again to breathe your free air. I expect it will mend my constitution and confirm my principles. I have, indeed, as good an atmosphere at home as the climate will allow, but have nothing to brag of as to the state and liberty of my country. Poverty and luxury prevail among all sorts; pride, ignorance, and knavery among the priesthood; and vice and wickedness among the laity (he speaks here of the established church, but note what he goes on to say:). This is bad enough; but it is not the worst I have to tell you. That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution rages among some; and, to their eternal infamy, the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such purposes… There are, at this time, in the adjacent county, not less than five or six well-meaning men in close jail for publishing their religious sentiments, which, in the main, are very orthodox. I have neither patience to hear, talk or think of anything relative to this matter; for I have squabbled and scolded, abused and ridiculed so long about it to little purpose that I am without common patience. So I must beg you to pity me, and pray for liberty of conscience to all."¹⁷

The author was James Madison, who was to play a conspicuous and important part in the fight Jefferson was launching. This, again, is taken from Claude G. Bowers secular biography of Thomas Jefferson: in which context, he goes on to tell how that Jefferson himself witnessed these same "turbulent scenes" of persecution of the Baptists in the years before the Revolution.

It must be noted and understood, that had not the "Great Awakening" taken place in the Providence of God just some thirty years prior to this, which greatly swelled the Baptist ranks, this persecution would not have been so pronounced. But then, in the cause and effect of history, the American Revolution would have never taken place. Observe: the truths they had learned, the promises of eternal freedom, which gave them the hunger for freedom, from the One Who said "ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32). Knowing freedom from the guilt and from the penalty and power of sin, their spirits longed to be free to serve their Savior according to God’s revealed will in His Holy Word. They’ve oft been spoken of as uneducated and unpolished (though not all were, even by this world’s standards), but one thing they knew: the Word of God. The lowest of them had the highest of educations in the most glorious field of study. Untainted by the citadels of miseducation as of our times, they simply believed God.

And during the Revolution, it should be readily understood that security was a serious problem. Many orders were issued which forbade anyone foreign born or of uncertain loyalty to be placed into dispatch service or to be given secret information of any kind (these too, are but a matter of public record). Over a fourth of the native population were Tories loyal to the king. And there were many others whose loyalties elsewhere made them a danger to the cause. Even with modern warfare we can barely appreciate the problems of security which such conditions would involve. But there was one group of people whose essential freedoms in matters they considered dearer than life made them supremely loyal to the cause. This was the Baptists. They fought for freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. Everyone involved knew this was so. And thus we find that they were continually called upon to render service. This was the one group whose loyalty was never questioned. Many of the leaders of the Revolution took them into their confidence and surrounded themselves with their personages.

It is hard for us to understand today just how much one’s religious tendencies could influence their loyalties. But our Founding Fathers lived in such a day. It would have been impossible for them to have not considered religious affiliations in such matters. Even though some of them were nominally affiliated with some of the Protestant denominations themselves, the fact of the Revolution is prima-facie evidence that their secular freedoms to them were of more importance than their religious affiliations. We have the evidence that as the struggle for liberty developed they more and more found themselves aligned with principles and views that the Baptists had long expressed. Yet existent letters abound between both Thomas Jefferson and the Baptists (their churches and associations) and George Washington and the Baptists. As we shall see, Thomas Jefferson considered them as "principle partners" and their views as of a chief contribution to the forming of the foundation of the new government.

Space does not permit to tell of their influence and help. Such as that of John Leland, the Baptist preacher, upon James Madison, who led the fight to adopt the Constitution; without which help, it is clear, it would have never been adopted.¹⁸ Of John Leland’s and Samuel Harris’s (the Baptist preacher under whom Lewis Craig was converted) influence on George Washington.¹⁹ Of the young Baptist preacher Richard Furman who "by his prayers and eloquent appeals so reassured the patriots that the British General Cornwallis is said to have remarked that ‘he feared the prayers of that godly youth more than the armies of Sumter and Marion.’"²⁰ Or of John Gano, another of the famous early Baptist preachers later to be found in Kentucky, who was "the foremost chaplain of the American Revolution" and a personal and trusted friend of George Washington.²¹ Or of John Young, who was born near Fredericksburg, Virginia June 24, 1764 and may well have heard the preaching of Lewis Craig from the jail house window there as a boy, who but yet in his teens served as the personal dispatch courier for George Washington during the war. Then he too later became one of the famous early Kentucky Baptist preachers, regarded as the father of the Greenup Association in Kentucky.²² Both Ambrose Dudley (first pastor of Bryan Station Baptist Church) and Lewis Craig served on the ordination committee which ordained John Young. Or of the father of the famous Henry Clay, Elder John Clay, the Baptist preacher of Hanover County, Virginia. Or of John Hart, whose father "a man of courage and patriotism, raised a company of volunteers, which was led to Quebec, with whom he fought bravely on the Plains of Abraham against the French."²³ Or of John Hart himself, who signed the Declaration of Independence, which he knew was to be published when just two days before a powerful British Army was landed on Staten Island:

"He owned a valuable farm, grist, saw and fulling mills; he had a wife and family whose happiness and security were dear to him; his residence was on the highway of the enemy and his signature was sure to bring down vengeance in a week or two; he knew that everything which he owned except the soil would be destroyed, his dear ones scattered, and his life taken if by the providence of the Evil One he was captured, and yet he did not hesitate to sign the Declaration of Independence, though it might prove his own death warrant, and though it could hardly fail to inflict the heaviest losses and the most painful sufferings on him and his. The enemy soon found out his patriotism and the happy home of Mr. Hart. His children fled, his property was wasted, and though an old man heavily laden of years he was compelled to leave his residence and conceal himself. He was pursued with unusual fury and malice, and could not with safety sleep twice in the same place. One night he had the house of a dog for a shelter and its owner for his companion. Added to the intensity of the bitterness of his persecutions, he was driven from the couch of his dying wife, whose anguish he was not permitted to assuage" (Cathcart, The Baptists and the American Revolution). He built the Baptist meeting house at Hopewell and gave it the burying ground. A shaft of Quincy marble now marks his resting-place, which was dedicated by the Governor of the State.²⁴

"And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of…" Samuel Rodgers and David Jones,²⁵ Jeremiah Walker, John Williams, Charles Thompson, Hezekiah Smith or Captain McClanahan who raised a company chiefly composed of Baptists, whom he commanded as captain and preached to as chaplain,²⁶ or Oliver Hart, or William Tennent,²⁷ or Joseph Bledsoe, William Marshall, George Stokes Smith, John Taylor, Ambrose Dudley, William E. Waller, John Waller, and Captain William Ellis,²⁸ or Colonel Richard Calloway, Joseph Barnett, General Duff Green, John La Rue (of whom La Rue County, Kentucky was named), Randolph Hall, David Thompson, George Smith, William Hickman, and John Dupuy,²⁹ or of the father and brothers of Lewis Craig: Toliver Craig and Joseph and Elijah Craig, and so many more who filled the ranks for freedom’s cause. But the tip of the iceberg is represented here.

We know and hear the names of the statesmen and leaders of the Revolution and not these men simply because God has always chosen to do His wondrous works in obscurity. Christ was born in a manger in the little village of Bethlehem, not in a palace in a capital city. He went up "into a mountain" away from the crowds in Luke the sixth chapter in order to form His first church unbeknownst to the world, but look what effect it has had! Even so, in Howison’s History of Virginia we read "The influence of the denomination was strong among the common people, and was beginning to be felt in high places. In two points they were distinguished. No class of people in America were more devoted advocates of the principles of the Revolution; none more willing to give their money and goods to their country; none more prompt to march to the field of battle, and none more heroic in actual combat than the Baptists of Virginia. Secondly, in their hatred of the church Establishment (which had ever persecuted them)" (Howison, History of Virginia, II. 170. Richmond, 1848).³⁰ Here they saw opportunity not to "lord it over others as others had lorded it over them," but simply to cast off the hand which had oppressed them. Again, we read:

The Baptists in Virginia took a bold stand. "The Baptists," says Dr. Hawks, "were not slow to discover the advantageous position in which the political troubles of the country placed them. Their numerical strength was such as to make it important to both sides to secure their influence. They knew this, and therefore determined to turn the circumstance to their profit as a sect. Persecution had taught them not to love the Establishment (Church), and they now saw before them a reasonable prospect of overturning it entirely. In their Association, they had calmly discussed the matter, and resolved upon their course; in this course they were consistent to the end, and the war which they waged against the church was a war of extermination" (Hawks, Contributions to Ecclesiastical History).³¹

The case here is obviously overstated. The only thing we wished to "exterminate" was their power to oppress us. But having set the stage, let us return again to trace the history of Lewis Craig, who was to become the "father of Kentucky Baptists".

In a day in which the principles of liberty and freedom were being expressed Lewis Craig’s court case so embarrassed the colony of Virginia, with men like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson taking up the Baptist cause, that the colonial legislature of Virginia determined to write a new "Statute for Religious Liberty in the Colony of Virginia." At first Patrick Henry, having fallen in love with some of their views but yet not perfectly understanding their position, proposed that there be four state churches in the dominion: the Presbyterian, the Episcopalian, the Congregationalist, and the Baptist. The Baptists alone protested! They met daily on the legislative steps pleading with the legislators that it be not so! They had never been a state-church and they would not be one now! Patrick Henry said, in effect, "If you Baptists will follow me, I will take you out of the country, I will set you up on high. Your preachers are going around with their shoes run over and the seat of their breeches out; you are outcasts! I’ll make you a respectable people if you will let me. I’ll make your religion one of the ways of the colony. Your preachers will draw a paycheck from the state. The state will build your church houses; and the state will put good clothes on your preachers’ backs, and on your preachers’ children." The Baptists of Virginia said, "You still don’t understand!" "You don’t know what we’re about!"

But Patrick Henry proceeded to force it upon them anyway. The law that he had drafted passed the first reading. Then it passed the second reading in disregard to their protests. It would have passed the third and final reading to become the law of the land, but in God’s all wise and protective providence over His people, He answered the prayers of His people, and Patrick Henry was elected governor of the colony and was thus disqualified from participating in the legislature. Thus, he could not be present to drive it through that third and final reading with his masterful eloquence. The bill lost but by a few votes.

Note that all this was while the war was going on. In the history of warfare this was not as in modern warfare that disrupts all, but this was still as in ancient warfare which end results were determined mainly upon the battlefield between opposing armies; while, in large degree, the lives of the citizenry went on relatively normal; "relatively" I say, as in comparison to modern warfare. The legislatures of the colonies met throughout the war uninterrupted for the most part.

So then, Thomas Jefferson was asked to write the new statute. Now Jefferson was a man whose attitude about liberty brought upon him much verbal abuse. He was thoroughly hated by the Establishment Churches, especially the New England clergy. They called him an infidel and an atheist. As a matter of fact he was baptized (sprinkled, not baptized) in infancy, not scripturally – as a believer, but as an Episcopalian; and he had strong Unitarian tendencies and an even more oft expressed bent towards Deism, which had become the dominant religious attitude among upper-class Americans of that era.³² Nevertheless, about the only time he ever regularly attended any church service was when he used to go with his friends, relatives and neighbors to the Old Albemarle Baptist Church in Albemarle County near his home. Later, this church took possession of the Buck Mountain church house and was known as the Buck Mountain Baptist Church when he wrote one of the following referred to letters in 1809. In 1833 this church moved again, and again changed its name to the Chestnut Grove Baptist Church. It is to this church that the historian Curtis refers when he says:

"There was a small Baptist church which held its monthly meetings for business at a short distance from Mr. Jefferson’s house, eight or ten years before the American Revolution. Mr. Jefferson attended these meetings for several months in succession. The pastor on one occasion asked him how he was pleased with their church government. Mr. Jefferson replied, that it struck him with great force and had interested him much, that he considered it the only form of true democracy then existing in the world, and had concluded that it would be the best plan of government for the American colonies. This was several years before the Declaration of Independence."³³ (Quoted from Thomas Armitage, D. D., writing in 1886.)

So Mr. Jefferson said he considered the Baptist form of church government "the only form of true democracy then existing in the world." This is not exactly what Baptists believe. They believe in a "Spirit-led Democracy". Each and every individual church body is an independent autonomous democracy "under Christ" duty bound to heed and hold the Word of God above the commandments and traditions of men. A self governing democracy subservient to Christ, that remains a true church only so long as it remains submissive to His precepts and responsive to His leading. But the democracy aspect of it was all that Thomas Jefferson saw. This was something new to him. No earthly hierarchy here. Yet even with just this understanding he foresaw a government destined to become the greatest nation upon the face of the earth. Thomas Armitage goes on to quote Curtis to say:  "This author also says that he had this statement at second-hand only, from Mrs. Madison, wife of the fourth President of the United States, who herself had freely conversed with Jefferson on the subject, and that her remembrance of these conversations was ‘distinct,’ he ‘always declaring that it was a Baptist Church from which these views were gathered.’ Madison and Jefferson stood side by side with the Baptists in their contest for a free government, and they served together in the Committee of Seventeen in the Assembly of Virginia, when it was secured in 1777. ‘After desperate contests in that Committee almost daily, from the 11^th of October to the 5^th of December,’ the measure was carried; but Jefferson says of this struggle, in his autobiography, that it was ‘the severest in which he was ever engaged.’ No person then living had better opportunities for knowing the facts on this matter than had Mrs. Madison. Then the records of the early Baptists in Virginia show that there were Baptist Churches in Albemarle County, where Jefferson lived, which fact presents strong circumstantial evidence to the accuracy of this report (strongholds of other than Establishment churches being centralized in that day, pocketed in some counties and not in others). Robert Semple (the early Virginia historian) mentions two such bodies, the Albemarle, founded in 1767, and the Toteer, 1775. John Asplund, in his Register for 1790, gives four churches in that county, namely, ‘Garrison’s meeting, Pretey’s Creek, Toteer Creek and White Sides Creek;’ Garrison’s having been organized in 1774, the others are given without date. He also says that these churches had 258 members and 5 ministers, namely William Woods, Jacob Watts, Bartlett Bennet, Martin Dawson and Benjamin Burger. This renders it certain that besides Jefferson’s intimacy with John Leland and other well-known names of our fathers, he had opportunities enough at home to become acquainted with Baptist principles and practices. Though he was skeptical on the subject of religion, he always spoke warmly of his cooperation with the Baptists in securing religious liberty. In a letter written to his neighbors, the members of the Buck Mountain Baptist Church, 1809, he says: "We have acted together from the origin to the end of a memorable revolution, and we have contributed, each in the line allotted us, our endeavors to render its issues a permanent blessing to our country."³⁴

I should like to quote the rest of the short letter from which that last sentence was taken in just a moment in the following context: "Jefferson comprehended Baptist aims perfectly," says Armitage, "for he was in perpetual intercourse with their leading men, and they intrusted him with the charge of their public documents. His mother was an Episcopalian, but his favorite aunt, her sister, Mrs. Woodson, was a Baptist. These two sisters were the daughters of Isham Randolph. Mrs. Woodson resided in Goochland County. When young he loved to visit her house and accompany her to the Baptist Church, of which she and her husband were members. It is through the members of his uncle and aunt’s family, as well as through the Madisons, that the tradition has come down that he caught his first views of a democratic form of government while attending these meetings. A letter lies before the writer from Mrs. O. P. Moss, of Missouri, whose husband was a direct descendant of the Woodson family; his mother knew Jefferson intimately, and has kept the tradition alive in the family. She says that ‘when grown to manhood these impressions became so fixed that upon them he formulated the plan of a free government and based the Declaration of Independence.’ Jefferson himself speaks of his close intimacy with the Baptists in the following epistle, already referred to in Chapter VIII:

‘To the members of the Baptist Church of Buck Mountain, in Albemarle; Monticello, April 13^th, 1809:

‘I thank you, my friends and neighbors, for your kind congratulations on my return to my native home, and of the opportunities it will give me of enjoying, amidst your affections, the comforts of retirement an rest. Your approbation of my conduct is the more valued, as you have best known me, and is an ample reward for any services I may have rendered. We have acted together from the origin to the end of a memorable revolution, and we have contributed, each in the line allotted to us, our endeavors to render its issues a permanent blessing to our country. That our social intercourse may, to the evening of our days, be cheered and cemented by witnessing the freedom and happiness for which we have labored, will be my constant prayer. Accept the offering of my affectionate esteem and respect.’"³⁵

But the battle for religious liberty was not easily won. Throughout the war Thomas Jefferson led the fight in the Virginia Legislature with partial victory won in 1777. With James Madison’s help, in 1779 his "Ordinance of Religious Freedom" was introduced again. Incredibly, it was not until 1786 that Jefferson’s "Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom" was finally passed.

To again note the chronology: the Revolutionary War began on April 19^th, 1775, with the "shot heard around the world," at Lexington, Massachusetts. The trial of Lewis Craig, Joseph Craig, and Aaron

Bledsoe "For preaching the Gospel of the Son of God in the colony of Virginia" is also given as 1775.³⁶ Patrick Henry, their defense attorney, tried to get his statute which prescribed a balance of state power to be vested in several churches in the year 1776 as they drew up the first constitution for the commonwealth of Virginia. Henry became governor of the new commonwealth as soon as it was established in June 1776 and became disqualified to serve in the legislature. Then on October 7^th, 1776 the new Virginia assembly was called to order for the first time. Three months before this Thomas Jefferson had written and signed the Declaration of Independence; and four days after being called to order, Jefferson was appointed to the Committee on Religion appointed to resolve this unsettled problem. So from 1776 till 1786 was a ten-year battle which Jefferson himself described as "the severest contest in which I have ever been engaged."³⁷ He was fought "tooth and nail" all the way by those with "establishment church" views. His biographer said it was "the most bitter fight he was ever to encounter –his fight for the complete separation of Church and State, for absolute religious freedom on American soil, and for the snuffing of the sinister flame of religious intolerance. This was to culminate in his Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom which he was to rank on a level with the Declaration of Independence."³⁸ For the reader to understand the tenacity and conviction with which he followed through in this fight it was first necessary to tell of the influence that motivated him. Things do not happen by accident. Though the influence of the Truth of God may operate in obscurity in a backwater county of but a mere colony, the result is often manifest openly world wide (as even America’s "experiment" in religious liberty has influenced all the world to one degree or another). Yet, only God’s own people will truly understand and be thankful for what is here being related. As only those with a keen spiritual perception will understand the implications of the "result" of this "experiment" which will be related in just a moment.

So in 1786 freedom of religion was finally guaranteed in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And for the protection of every American who has lived since that time that law became the standard upon which the Bill of Rights was modeled in 1791 when the very first sentence in the very first amendment of the Bill of Rights stated that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…" The "no-establishment of religion" clause was won by the Baptists and for the Baptists and given to the Baptists for their help and participation in the American Revolution. This, no historian with all the facts can honestly deny.

That very first sentence in the Bill of Rights goes on to say that Congress shall make no law "abridging the freedom of speech,…" They understood full well that freedom of religion and freedom of speech were inexorably bound up together and unable to be separated. Today, you can believe anything you want in China, as long as you don’t tell anybody about it. Freedom of speech was granted in the context of freedom of religion because of a people who exercised their freedom (granted or not) to tell others what they believed. This is an inalienable" right that you can not take away. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech go together. But neither they nor Thomas Jefferson believed that anybody had the right to force their views upon another.

Today, our Supreme Court judges have so twisted the "freedom of speech" clause so as to use it to defend things blatantly sacrilegious that don’t even have to do with speech; today, applying it mainly to a defense of pornography of all things! Only a morally bankrupt and perverted society could so pervert such a glorious and hard won freedom, which took thousands of years in the history of man to obtain, and was only obtained in the Providence of God through the lives and influence of His people. The depravity of man is seen, as even in the short history of the apostasy of Israel in the Old Testament, in that it has taken less than two hundred years for the enemies of freedom to turn such freedom upon its head, to turn it against itself, to destroy itself.

How hard won this freedom was, is seen in that Connecticut and Massachusetts did not grant true freedom of religion until well into the 1800’s. Massachusetts, the last, did not grant it till 1833. John T. Christian said that:

"Massachusetts did not ratify the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States (Backus, II.). The suggested amendment came from the Baptists. "Denominationally," says Cathcart, "no community asked for this change in the Constitution but the Baptist. The Quakers probably would have petitioned it, if they had thought of it, but they did not. John Adams and the Congregationalists did not desire it; the Episcopalians did not wish it; it went too far for most Presbyterians in Revolutionary times, or in our days, when we hear so much about putting the divine name in the Constitution. The Baptists asked it through Washington; the request commended itself to his judgment and to the generous soul of Madison; and to the Baptists, beyond a doubt, belongs the glory of engrafting its best articles on the noblest Constitution ever framed for the government of mankind" (Cathcart, Centennial Offering). ³⁹

It might be added here that the Methodists themselves surprised everyone in throwing their weight against disestablishment at that first Assembly when they "presented a petition actually opposing the disestablishment and praying that everything possible be done to strengthen it."⁴⁰ They would have rather deprived the Baptists freedom of religion than to have voted for their own. By showing their nearness and dearness to their own roots they helped delay passage of the bill till 1786. Had they been successful in stopping it they would have no doubt rejoined their mother, the Church of England, to share in the spoils of establishment religion. Methodism, the newest invention of man at the time, was yet a "not-quite fully severed" branch of the Church of England.

In Connecticut, as well, the establishment churchmen of the standing order (Presbyterial – Congregational) thought the bottom had finally fallen out from under everything when once and for all in 1818 the law was finally passed that the Baptists could no longer be forced to pay the establishment churchmen’s salaries there.

It must also be pointed out here that at this time there were no Campbellites (Church of Christ and Christian Church: so-called), no Mormons (who have held the last vestige of established church-state religion in America in the state of Utah), no modern 7^th Day Adventists, false Jehovah Witnesses, Pentecostals (nor any of the "isms" thereof), no Charismatics, so-called Churches of God nor Assemblies of God nor any of the scandals thereof, nor any other of the man made cults of the latter days. In the Providence of God this was before any and all of that ever-even came into being. If you really understand the depravity of man and the extent to which he fell and died in Adam, then you’ll understand that the amazing thing is not that there are so many "fig leaf religion ‘isms’," but what is truly amazing is that there is anyone at all who yet believes the truth, and that there are even yet enough of us to fellowship over it. It is only by the grace of God. But that particular phenomenon of the "deceiving" of the latter days (Matt. 24:11, Romans 16:17&18, II Thess. 2:3&10, II Tim. 3:13, etc.), which began in America and which was spread abroad from these shores in the last two centuries, was indeed one aspect of true freedom of religion, as men were given freedom to believe "whatever?"! This took place as the total depravity of man was given free reign in the spiritually doctrinal realm. Even so, did men go from worshipping the false gods of the people around them to "gods" of their own "imagination" towards the end of the Kingdom of Judah (Look and see if it is not so! Jeremiah 16:10-13, 18:12, and 23:16-20&21). They worshipped gods after their own imaginations, gods that they had made up in their own minds, and yet called them by the name "Jehovah" (Jeremiah 5:2&3a. – 4b.), as even they call themselves "Christian" today. How much spiritual discernment does the reader have? How much does it take? How important it is to believe precisely according to the Word of God!

But in the Providence of God, God kept it simple at the time we are here considering. There were various establishment religions and those related, and then there was but one core group that historically was not. They who remained sound amongst the Baptists were providentially preserved never to be an establishment religion, they were kept through the doctrine they believed. They alone can say of themselves it has been fulfilled, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s." (Mark 12:17). This is but historical fact that cannot be successfully denied.

The historic unfolding of these things in conjunction with their prophetic foretelling are telling indeed. It is such that men ought to set up and take notice that the message of salvation, which these people preach, is not the same message as that of the world’s churches. There is no infant baptism here; there is no church membership to salvation; no going through the water to get to the blood; no sacramental salvation; no works which we may do to merit nor to keep the salvation of God. They preached "repentance" from dead works, and "faith" in the living God. Nothing but complete dependence upon Christ and Him alone, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His Mercy He saved us,…" (Titus 3:5). Thus, they called upon men to turn and to trust in Christ’s righteousness and in His death on their behalf, teaching that God alone could pay for sins, forgive sins, and reconcile the sinner unto Himself. It is not just befitting that a people who had a great part in history had a great message, but it was their great message for which they had a great part in history. God gave them that message, and God has kept them distinct as the only ones who have faithfully and consistently preached it.

Most people are not too sure about what they believe. Others may think they believe they "know not what:" (John 4:22). But we know, and are sure of the One Whom we worship. We know what He taught, and what His Word still teaches. We know what we believe. Now, that becomes offensive to some, but let them get all the comfort they can out of not being sure; we will take comfort in knowing of Whom we have believed and of what He has taught us. The "new evangelism" or "NeoEvangelicalism" of today which has overrun most denominations, which downplays doctrine and has taught most of "professing" Christianity that "its not important what you believe – its just important that you believe" is totally the opposite from what the Word of God teaches and has deluded multitudes. Unlike those who downplay the great doctrines of the Word of God, these people believed something, and it made a difference in their lives.

Because the Lord Jesus Christ promised repeatedly that His kind of churches would be here throughout the age till He come again, one should consider this issue well. In fact it can be narrowed down further still if one will go back to the Dark Ages when all there was were Catholics and Anabaptists that professed Christ’s name. The one was church-state "established" religion in league and in bed with "the kings of the earth" (Revelation 17:2) deceiving the "inhabitants of the earth" while the other "rendered unto God the things that are God’s, and unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s" (Matt. 22:21, Mark 12:16, Luke 20:24 – It is recorded and repeated three times for emphasis) and they never confused the issue by giving God’s due unto men. They honored God, followed Him, believed Him, and took Him as their spiritual head; and in spiritual matters they never succumbed to a church-state hierarchy of any kind. All the way up to the 1600’s the people we are here speaking about were still being called "Anabaptists" by the state churches (even in this country as well, even into the 1700’s they were still being called "Anabaptists"), as they "re-baptized" any and all who came over to them from man made and man authorized religion. Thus they had been dubbed "Anabaptists" or "Re-baptizers" throughout the age, till the prefix was finally dropped and they became simply: "Baptists" (It might be noted here, that they didn’t think they were "re-baptizing" anyone. They simply did not recognize false, and unauthorized, or unscriptural baptism, and thus they believed they were baptizing saved candidates for the first time. It was the world’s churches that called them "Anabaptists").

The Bible does not teach "Apostolic Succession" as in the Roman Catholic doctrine. The Bible teaches Church Succession. Christ did not say, "upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against him." but It does say, "upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matt. 16:18). And so again, in the light of the fact that Jesus Christ promised repeatedly that His kind of church would be here till He come again, it would behoove every reader to consider from those then in existence just which ones amongst whom they might be, and seriously give heed to the message of salvation which they have always preached: "except ye repent," "repent ye, and believe the gospel," "except ye repent" ye perish (Mark 1:15, Luke 13:5). Do you in fact know that Christ died for you? Are you trusting Him, or a false baptism, when not even true baptism will save? Christ alone can save, only the Christ of the Scriptures. Do you know Him? Do you know that He died for you?

In returning to our history, it is entirely correct to think of the court case of Lewis Craig, Joseph Craig and Aaron Bledsoe as directly leading to the guarantees of religious liberty which we enjoy, as any court case that sets precedence and leads to new legislation does just that. As in any case, there may be many other influences, and in this case there certainly were many Baptist influences; yet without a doubt, this case played a direct and major part. As the repercussions of it were felt in government, we find that there were not only similarities in language in both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but Thomas

Jefferson himself understood that his Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty served as the model for these guarantees in both of our national founding documents; which legislative battles, as we have already shown, did stem from such court cases as these. Even in that it was a statute for religious liberty ought to cause us to ask who it was who did not have such liberty heretofore! Few there are today who know what a great heritage the Baptists people have, and fewer still who understand how great their God!

What then became of these people who so began to accomplish such great things in the cause of Christ their Savior? If we follow their trail we find that a good many of them came next to Kentucky. "One old historian calls Kentucky ‘the vortex of Baptist preachers.’" Another said, "It is questionable with some whether half of the Baptist preachers raised in Virginia have not emigrated to the western country (Kentucky)."⁴¹

If you will remember the quote with which we began this article:

"The discovery and occupation of the Ohio Valley was a matter of the greatest political and religious importance. The issue was, should it be French and Roman Catholic, or English and Protestant? The settlement of Kentucky was the key to this vexed problem. So the occupation of Kentucky became a question of international moment."¹

This was the state of things even before the American Revolution. This is what the French and Indian Wars were all about. These things had been on the lips of the American colonists for most all of their lives. This was even yet the question now between this emerging nation and the English Establishment. Our Baptist forefathers knew that whose concept of religious liberty prevailed on the western frontier would be determined by who populated that frontier. These were the people who poured into the frontier of Kentucky after the Revolution. These were the people who were the beginning and the mainstay of what came to be known as "The Bible Belt" as they extended even beyond Kentucky; "The Bible Belt" which has served as the conscience of the nation for over two hundred years, and has comparatively only began to be watered down in our life times, till that today we could have a string of Presidents who have claimed to be Baptists yet neither they nor barely anyone else knows enough to know that they are absolutely no such thing in the historic and Biblical sense. But even that there is a "Bible Belt," or ever has been, is a testimony to Baptist influence, as has already been pointed out – it was basically they versus the state churches in the day of which we speak. Apostates broke off to form counterfeit groups, and others arose, or were invented, and poured in to confuse; but "God is not the author of confusion," (I Corinthians 14:33). Yet the testimony of history is clear and irrefutable, the Baptists were first and foremost in numbers and influence.

All this was long before even the Southern Baptist Convention ever came into being. Today the Convention may play "politically correct" games (a modern euphemism for "lies") by apologizing for slavery. Yet the Convention did not even come into existence until slavery was on the way out the door (anyone can check the dates). They insult the public’s intelligence (if the public had the intelligence to be insulted) with such "political correctness." Yet the public loves to be lied to! [The Baptists I am speaking of were advocating against slavery in their associational meetings long before anyone else – way back in the 1700’s.⁴² It seemed wholly unreasonable to them to contend for their own freedom if they did not contend for the freedom of others. Even before this, certain of their forefathers from Europe, too poor to book passage by their own means, sold themselves into slavery in order to make passage to the West Indies when they heard of the plight of the black people being processed through the sugar plantations of the Virgin Islands by the Spanish Roman Catholic slave traders. Here they worked shoulder to shoulder with black slaves in the sugar cane fields during the day just that they might build churches and preach to them at night. And marvelously they were given a niche to fill as they were seen as assisting in "civilizing" the "savages". Shiploads of these blacks (as broken, trained, prepared, and more valuable slaves) were later sold into the American colonies. Has anyone ever wondered where whole shiploads of black people singing Negro-spirituals even came from, as they were off-loaded on these American shores? Wherever did they learn those Negro-spirituals? Certainly not in Africa. And who were these people that sold themselves and did all that they could that they might comfort these poor souls and hope to see some saved? You see, the eternal freedom of a saved soul was much more important than mere natural freedom to God’s people, as evidenced by the fact that they were willing to give up their own freedom to win eternal freedom for others. Then they risked their own lives to win freedom of religion for all in the American Revolution.] Nevertheless, apart from the ills and evils of slavery, the greatest lie of the Southern Baptist Convention is found in the fact that Baptists believed what Baptists believed long before the Southern Baptist Convention ever existed, and it is not what Southern Baptists believe today. We can easily document what that first generation of churches that went in to make up the Convention in 1845 believed, and if anyone will compare that to what they believe today it ought to be readily apparent to anyone who will do so that they don’t believe what they used to. To their eternal consternation and shame there are still some Independent Missionary Baptists that still believe what Baptists used to believe serving as a witness against what such man-made, man-centered, and man-corrupting hierarchies have done to try to change and rewrite history in their attempt to try and change that.

But let us one last time return to finish our account. Please note the following dates: Most of your histories on the Revolutionary War will tell you that the war ended with the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown, October 19^th, 1781; and that the war was then over "with the exception of a few minor skirmishes on the western frontier." Well they weren’t minor and insignificant. The last battle took place almost a year after Cornwallis’s surrender at a place called Bryant’s Station, Kentucky in August 1782. The British Captain William Caldwell and the "butcher" half breed Simon Girty with six-hundred Indian warriors and a troop of Canadians laid siege to the fort at Bryant’s Station, at that time the largest fort on the western frontier – larger even than those on the Ohio River at the time. Did they not know that the war was over? News traveled slowly in those days, but not that slow! No, the question was yet unanswered as to whose sovereignty would prevail in the west. And the question for those Baptists Brethren as to whose view of religious liberty would prevail!

We could look at the monument erected on that site over a hundred and fourteen years after the fact on August 15^th, 1896, by The Lexington Chapter of The Daughters of The American Revolution to see the names of the people who manned that fort. Here again, we find the names of Lewis Craig and many of those associated with him. There are the names of the women who carried the water to quench the fire arrows and to withstand the siege, there engraved in granite. There are the names of the men who defended the fort as well, all as recorded in Kentucky State History; all from a secular view, with no mention that the majority of those names were Baptists. That historical marker is in a country setting some five miles northeast of Lexington, KY. A few hundred yards across the intersection of Bryan Station Road and Briar Hill Pike stands Bryan Station Baptist Church first built while the fort still stood. There is nothing else there but farmhouses and pasture. Few today, even of they that live there, know that a battle took place there that determined the future expansion of America. Even fewer still know what was behind it and who those people were.

We could go back to the year before in 1781 to Spottsylvania County, Virginia, to one Sunday morning in September, to watch Lewis Craig address the congregation which he pastored (just six years after that historic court case in which he was defended by Patrick Henry through which all our freedom of religion was won). It was Upper Spottsylvania Baptist Church, at the outdoor assembly on "farewell Sunday" as over two hundred of them prepared to migrate to Kentucky. He spoke of the sacrifices that they’d made, their sufferings under oppressive laws, their gallant contribution in the Revolutionary War in the fight for civil and religious liberty. He told them that though they were already weary and worn from the long campaign even now coming to a close, that even now: "when the country was scorched and wasted and impoverished by the war, the rich and illimitable acres of a western Canaan were offered to them almost ‘without money and without price’ and declared in earnest and impressive words that it was a higher power that had pointed out the way and that the same far-seeing Providence that had ruled all the events of their past was leading them forth to the ‘wilderness’ and would lead them to the end. He is said to have closed with one of his characteristic exhortations and with farewell words of solemnity and feeling as only such an occasion could inspire. The eyes and hearts of all were full indeed. How deeply they were moved, we may faintly imagine when we remember that they believed as he believed and that they had passed as he had through the days and the scenes he had depicted."⁴³ From the history of what has come to be known as The Travelling Church.

They came through the Cumberland Gap eventually to establish churches throughout Kentucky and beyond. Lewis Craig’s name is connected with the founding of so many churches that he is sometimes called "The Father of Kentucky Baptists." After they successfully withstood the siege in 1782 and the British came no more leading Indian bands against the pioneers, Lewis Craig established South Elkhorn Baptist Church the next year in 1783 (which is today a Convention church having departed from the way), and in 1786 he returned to help organize Bryan Station Baptist Church where she yet stands today a short distance from where that final battle took place. Her authority, according to Landmark Baptist principles of church succession (being observed before the term "Landmarkism" was ever even coined) was extended from the Upper Spottsylvania Baptist Church, through Lewis Craig – through "The Traveling Church." We have her original founding documents and the record of what those who founded her taught. After over two hundred years she is yet teaching and preaching what she originally did. There are few today who can in all honesty say that; fewer still who can document it. We have all her history, even noting when she broke fellowship of her own accord with Southern Baptists as they departed from "the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." (Jude v:3). God has given that testimony unto us, we own it not of ourselves. We pray (and ask all those who might read and believe to pray also) that God will yet give it unto us to continue to the end even as we have begun, that His promise of "church perpetuity" would be fulfilled through us, even us. For fulfilled it shall be – through one or another, for God is "faithful Who .. promised." Oh to God! – that we would be a part of His churches that remain faithful. We cannot change the past. We, for one, would not want to. We openly declare that we are dependent upon God for the future.

"To God be the glory, great things He hath done…" Yet all these things are but one strain in the orchestra of time, which plays symphonies of praise to the glory of His grace, in the greatness of His Salvation. And yet greater things are yet to come…

FOOTNOTES

John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists of the United States, from the First Settlement of the Country to the Year 1845 (Nashville: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1926 [many are the books which they have published which prove from whence they have departed]), Vol. II, p. 283.

Herring’s Statutes, as quoted by S. H. Ford, The Origin of the Baptists (Texarkana: Bogard Press, 1950), p. 7. (S. H. Ford was a Southern Baptist whose life. H. Spencer, History of Kentucky Baptists (Cincinnati: Baumes, 1885), Vol. I, pp. 26-30. (Another Southern Baptist who lived shortly after the events recorded, and whose work was written at a time when Southern Baptists still believed something) .e reached back into the first half of the 1800’s. This quote is taken from a later edition of his work).

J. H. Spencer, History of Kentucky Baptists (Cincinnati: Baumes, 1885), Vol. I, pp. 26-30. (Another Southern Baptist who lived shortly after the events recorded, and whose work was written at a time when Southern Baptists still believed something).

John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists (1926), Vol. II, pp. 203-204, 198, 209-213.

J. H. Spencer, History of Kentucky Baptists (1885), Vol. I, pp. 26-28. (Quoted from John Taylor’s, History of Ten Baptist Churches (1823), p. 278, which author was a contemporary and personal friend of Lewis Craig.

Ibid. Vol. I, pp. 715-716, & Vol. II, pp. 353-354.

Ibid. Vol. I, p. 716.

J. M. Carroll, The Trail of Blood (Lexington: Ashland Avenue, 1931).

J. H. Spencer, History of Kentucky Baptists (1885), Vol. I, pp. 28-29.

S. H. Ford, The Origin of the Baptists (1950 reprint), pp. 5-6.

John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists (1926), Vol. II, pp. 217-240.

Ibid. Vol. II, p. 222.

Ibid. Vol. II, p. 222.

Ibid. Vol. II, pp. 223-224.

Ibid. Vol. II, p. 221.

The World Book Encyclopedia, article on "Thomas Jefferson" (1961), Vol. J-K, p. 60.

Claude G. Bowers, The Young Jefferson (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1945), p. 193.

John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists (1926), VolJohn T. Christian, A History of the Baptists (1926), Vol. II, p. 290.. II, p. 246.

Claude G. Bowers, The Young Jefferson (1945), p. 203.

J. H. Spencer, History of Kentucky Baptists (1885), Vol. I, pp. 182-197…& 484.

George W. Ranck, "The Travelling Church:" An Account of the Baptist Exodus From Virginia to Kentucky in 1781…(N. P. 1910), pp. 5-6.

It was plain that something very unusual was transpiring at an isolated building in Spottsylvania County, Virginia, one Sunday morning in September, 1781.* The house, which stood on the old Catharpin road leading to the then little village of Fredericksburg**, and which was located about four miles south of the spot since known as Parker’s Station, was surrounded by such a gathering of men, women and children, slaves, pack horses, cattle, dogs and loaded wagons as had never been seen in the county before, but there was no unseemly disorder and but little noise except such as came from fretful infants and from the bells on the grazing stock. The crowd was too great for the house and most of the people were assembled under the trees in front of it where the women had been provided with seats. It could not be a camp meeting – there were no signs of either cheerfulness or enjoyment. It was not a funeral though all were sad and many were deeply dejected. It was "farewell Sunday" at Upper Spottsylvania (Baptist) Church† --- the next morning the congregation was to start in a body for Kentucky. Such an exodus, --- one so strange and so complete, --- created a profound sensation, even though occurring as it did so near the exciting close of an eventful Revolution. Numerous squads of adventurers, it is true, had already followed Boone into the blood-stained depths of that magnificent wilderness "beyond the mountains," but here was a whole flourishing church about to journey to it, pastor, officers, members and all. Even as that greater church [questionable use: editors note] had journeyed from Egypt to the rich but ensanguined plains of Canaan. How this singular unanimity happened to come about nobody knows but the fact remains and these stout-hearted Baptists, once resolved, turned not back.

*Semple’s "Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Va." P. 153, and James B. Taylor’s "Lives Va. Baptist Ministers." First Series.

**Population in 1781 about 1000.

†Now known as "Craig’s" and located 22 miles SW of Fredericksburg, in Livingston township, and 4 miles from Parker’s Station on "the Narrow Gauge" or Piedmont, Fredericksburg and Potomac Rail Road.

Even the places of settlement were selected. Most of them were to locate in the neighborhood of Logan’s Fort in the Dick’s River region of Kentucky, while others would seek the centre of what is now called "The Blue Grass Region" and establish new homes a few miles east of Lexington.*

They set the day for their departure and their own familiar meeting-house was chosen as the place of final rendezvous. Then came weeks of energetic, hopeful and regretful preparation. All kinds of property were disposed of, all kinds of arrangements were made and the Farewell Sunday found them heavy-hearted but ready for the start with packing completed, homes abandoned and surrounded by friends who had gathered from far and near to bid them a last and long good bye. Of these, not a few were Baptist preachers of Spottsylvania and the neighboring counties. Among them, according to tradition, was Elijah Craig, the bold exhorter of the Blue Run church who had lunched in jail more than once on rye bread and water for conscience sake; Ambrose Dudley [first pastor of Bryan Station Baptist Church who followed "The Travelling Church" a few years later: editors note] who had often labored with him; William E. Waller, pastor of County Line; and William Ellis the aged shepherd of the Nottaway flock [who was yet to become a charter member of Bryan Station Baptist Church when it is organized in 1786: editors note] who had realized what "buffetings" meant long before the Revolution brought it’s blessed heritage of religious freedom. They had many relatives among the departing throng and all of them but the venerable Ellis soon followed them to the land of Boone.** John Waller, pastor of Lower Spottsylvania Church, and the most picturesque of the early Baptist ministers of Virginia

*The writer is indebted to Col. R. T. Durrett and Dr. Wm. Pratt for aid in securing data pertaining to the early Baptists of Virginia.

**W. E. Waller removed to Ky. In 1783 – Family sketch by Henry Waller. [As already noted, William Ellis must also have followed, as he became a charter member of Bryan Station, 1786, editors note].

Elijah Craig came to Ky. In 1785. John Taylor calls him the greatest of the three brothers (see: Ten Churches).

Ambrose Dudley came in 1786.

was also there.* He was the "Devil’s Adjutant" no longer.** The former persecutor, whole-souled in everything he undertook, had for years been one of the staunchest defenders of the people he had once so energetically reviled. One familiar figure was missing from the crowd: John Clay, the struggling preacher for the struggling church in the flat and desolate "slashes"† of Hanover was not there. Only a few weeks before the father of the eloquent "Henry of the West" had ceased from his labors forever. Preachers were not lacking in the expedition itself. Joseph Bledsoe of the Wilderness Church and father of the afterwards noted Senator Jesse Bledsoe of Kentucky; Joseph Craig, "the man who laid down in the road"‡; William Cave, a connection of the Craig’s, and Simeon Walton, pastor for a season of Nottaway Church, were four of probably a dozen preachers who accompanied it. Many more came after them, so many in fact that an early chronicler of the churches in Virginia calls Kentucky "the vortex of Baptist

*The Upper and the Lower Baptist Churches of this county, though entirely separate and distinct, are often confused by writers, some of whom have incorrectly mentioned Lewis Craig as pastor of "Lower" Spottsylvania Church.

**John Waller, so profane and reckless in early life as to gain the names of "Swearing Jack" and "Devil’s Adjutant," was one of the grand jury that in 1765 indicted Lewis Craig and other Baptists "for preaching the Gospel contrary to law." Semple.

†"The Slashes," a tract of piney woods with clay soils, near Hanover Court House. The mother of Henry Clay subsequently became a member of Clear Creek Baptist Church in Woodford Co., Ky.

‡Joseph Craig, brother of Lewis Craig, when arrested on one occasion for preaching without having taken out a license said, "A good man ought not to be put in prison, I won’t have any hand in it," forthwith laid down in the road and would neither walk nor ride. They let him go.

It was this same original Joseph Craig who said to a niece who was supposed to be at the point of death, "Think of your husband and all the children you have to raise. If you die now it will be the meanest thing you ever did in your life." She recovered (History of Ten Churches).

preachers."* Mingling with the crowd in front of the church was a young man noticeable for his fine physique, soldierly bearing and earnest air of watchfulness and responsibility. It was Capt. William Ellis,** son of the patriotic Ellis imprisoned in 1775 for denouncing British tyranny,† kinsman of the aged pastor of Nottaway Church and the military leader of this expedition. Experienced as an officer of the Continental army, and having already aided in the planting of one of the earliest outposts‡ in the wilds of central Kentucky, he was especially fitted both as a soldier and as a woodsman for the position to which he had been called. But the attention of the assembly was soon turned to the little temporary pulpit which had been hastily erected in the open air, and all eyes were fixed upon the master spirit of this unique movement – it’s religious leader so to speak – Lewis Craig,^§ the magnetic pastor of Upper Spottsylvania Church which to this day bears

*R. B. Semple. He adds in this connection – "It is questionable with some whether half the Baptist ministers raised in Virginia have not emigrated to the western country."

**Grandfather of the late Mrs. John Carty of Lexington, Ky. (History of Lexington, Ky., p. 29).

†"Hezekiah Ellis, father of the pioneer here named, is the historic character who was imprisoned in the Fredericksburg jail in 1775 by Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, for publicly denouncing the tyrannical course of the English government. The Ellis family, according to Henning and Bishop Meade, is of English descent, and is listed among the first settlers of the Colony of Virginia. The name first appears in the second charter granted to the London Company in 1609" (History of Fayette County, Ky., p. 496).

‡Col. John Grant, of North Carolina, and Capt. William Ellis, of Virginia, with other settlers, established Grant’s Station, five miles from Bryant’s, in Fayette County, Ky., Sept. 1779. They were driven away by the Indians in 1780, when Capt. Ellis returned to Virginia and re-entered the Continental army (History of Lexington, Ky., p. 29).

^§Lewis Craig, son of Toliver Craig, was born in Orange County, Va., 1740, according to James B. Taylor, who says (in Lives of Va. Bapt. Ministers) "he was baptized in 1767, when about 27 years old."

his name.* The man who arose to address them was then about forty-one years of age. He was not an Apollo in figure for he was barely of ordinary stature and was stoop shouldered, but his eye was expressive, his voice musical and strong and his manner earnest and impassioned. They all knew him. Many of them had participated with him in "the great awakening" which followed the efforts of the zealous Samuel Harris in 1765, and well remembered the day when he so boldly arraigned the famous grand jury of which "Swearing Jack" was a member.** Some of them had been arrested with him on that memorable 4th of June 1768† when he was seized by the Sheriff while conducting public worship in the very building which they now surrounded; and had sung with him "Broad is the road that leads to death" as they moved towards the Fredericksburg jail; while others in the crowd had not only witnessed this first case in Virginia of actual imprisonment for preaching contrary to the laws for the maintenance of the church establishment of England,‡ but had heard the eloquent

*Has been called "Craig’s Church" for more than a century, and is so named on the Va. Campaign maps of the late war [Civil War: Editors note]. It was constituted Nov. 20, 1767, and was the first Baptist Church organized between the James and the Rappahannock.

**See note on page 37. Craig’s earnest words at this time deeply impressed John Waller and resulted in his conversion.

†It was on this occasion that the prosecuting attorney said, "May it please your worship they (the Baptists) cannot meet a man on the road but they must ram a text of Scripture down his throat." Refusing to give security to preach no more in the county for twelve months they were sent to jail where they remained about six weeks when they were discharged without conditions. While in the jail "Elder Craig preached through the grates to large crowds and was the means of doing much good." Semple and J. B. Taylor.

‡Before the Revolution only ministers of the State Church (Episcopal) were free to preach in Virginia. Dissenters who did so without first securing license were liable to fine and imprisonment. Craig and his followers were "Separate Baptists," who, according to Foote (Sketches of Va., p. 318, of 1^st Series), "did not for various

denunciations of Patrick Henry, even then the acknowledged champion of popular rights in the colony – who had journeyed fifty miles on horseback to defend them. Many of them had heard the unflinching Craig preach through the grated window at Fredericksburg Jail, others had ministered to him during his subsequent imprisonment in Caroline,* and all had rejoiced in the prosperity of Upper Spottsylvania Church which had continued to grow from the time he became it’s regular pastor in 1770 until this autumnal Sunday of 1781.

After the usual preliminary services he spoke. Only echoes of that farewell sermon have reached us. Tradition says that he recalled the sudden rise of the Baptists in Virginia ten years before the Revolution;

their persistent struggle for religious liberty** and their rapid increase†

reasons obtain license for their houses of worship as the Regular Baptists generally did." In 1776 Virginia legislature, during it’s first session under the new Constitution, passed Mr. Jefferson’s bill repealing all penal laws against Dissenters and exempted them from contributions for the support of the Established Church. In 1779-80 the State Church was shorn of most of her remaining means of support and virtually disestablished. On the 17^th of December, 1784, Jefferson’s immortal bill "For Establishing Religious Freedom…" was adopted, and in 1801 the glebe, or church lands, which had been declared public property, were ordered to be sold.

*He was arrested in the County of Caroline in 1771, and imprisoned for three months.

**The Baptists were the earliest friends of freedom in Virginia, and their brave struggle for liberty of conscience had much to do with the birth and growth of revolutionary sentiment. Washington spoke of them as "Firm friends of civil liberty and the persevering promoters of our glorious revolution." (Sparks’ Washington, p.155 vol. xii).

†They had many accessions from "the Establishment, a patriotic fellow-feeling" being the forerunner of closer relations with the common man, as the laity of the State Church warmly espoused the cause of liberty. The Colonial families of Wallers, Dupuys and Ellis, mentioned in this sketch, were Episcopalian until the period of agitation which resulted in the Revolution. (See Meade’s: Old Churches and Families of Virginia).

in spite of oppressive laws, royal power, and a "roaring dragon."* That he claimed for his people: that though the Revolution had found them already worn and weary from the long campaign for conscience sake, they had fought as gallantly for their civil rights as they had battled before for their religious freedom. That he reminded them of the encouraging fact that now, when the country was scorched and wasted

*This season of tribulation never became tragic. John Leland, the Baptist minister and writer, who lived in Virginia during this very period, and who was personally acquainted with Craig and Ellis, says, "The dragon roared in Virginia but he was not red. No blood for religious opinion ever stained our soil." Doubtless, much of the "roaring" even would never have occurred but for the clergymen of the Establishment who were mainly supplied from England and were not in harmony with the spirit of the times in the Colony. To them the success of the Dissenters meant loss of consequence and of salaries, fees, rectories, and glebe lands. That the laity were far in advance of the clergy is shown by their glorious record from the first mutterings of the Revolution of which Washington, an Episcopalian, was the military leader. The great Declaration of Rights which was adopted by the Constitutional Convention of Virginia June 12, 1776, and in which is expressed that sublime truth "that all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience" was drafted by an Episcopal delegate, Col. George Mason. And Jefferson tells us that a majority of the first legislature of Virginia, which passed laws to make that truth effective, were such churchmen. It is pleasant in this connection to mention also the broad and honest treatment of the "Dissent troubles," (above alluded to) by Episcopal writers we have consulted, especially those of Virginia, their condemnation of the short-comings of the Establishment, the credit given Baptists and other Dissenters, and their delight at the separation of the church from the corrupting influences of a State connection. Referring to the sale of the glebe (or church) lands, Bishop Meade, many years latter said, "I have always rejoiced in the act of the Assembly so far as the church was concerned. Such has also been the feelings of almost all our clergy and laity with whom I have ever conversed."

and impoverished by the war, the rich and illimitable acres of a western Canaan were offered to them almost "without money and without price," and declared in earnest and impressive words that it was a higher power that had pointed out the way, and that the same far-seeing Providence that had ruled all the events of their past was leading them forth to the "wilderness" and would lead them to the end. He is said to have closed with one of his characteristic exhortations and with farewell words of solemnity and feeling as only such an occasion could inspire. The eyes and hearts of all were full indeed. How deeply they were moved we may faintly imagine when we remember that they believed as he believed and that they had passed as he had through the days and the scenes he had depicted.

Unfortunately, but one other feature of these last touching services has survived – the farewell tribute offered by John Waller beginning with the stanza:

"Great sorrow of late has filled my poor heart,

To think that the dearest of friends soon must part;

A few left behind, while many will go

To settle the desert down the Ohio."*

Mr. Waller’s powers as a poet were not Miltonic, but he had been to the people who heard him much more than a poet, and his sympathetic words brought many an answering sob.

The remainder of the day, after the dinner that the neighbors had provided, was spent in tearful communings, agonizing embraces and heart-rending scenes, for the emigrants knew what this separation meant. Some of them were aged, some were feeble, many were helpless women and not a few were poor. A weary journey of nearly six hundred miles stretched out before them. Even "the mountains" they so much dreaded were far away, and beyond the mountains extended a long and bloodstained path, which ended at last only where the tomahawk and scalping knife seemed never at rest. No wonder their hearts were breaking. They knew that for them there would be no return, that they were leaving home and old Virginia forever. They felt

*From Joseph Craig’s "Sketch of a Journal."

as the tenants of the Mayflower felt when they gazed for the last time upon the shores of England. The crowd slowly dispersed. The sun went down upon a strangely silent camp. For the first time the emigrants slept in their wagons - slept after many a prayer and many a tear.

Before daybreak the next morning Capt. Ellis was astir and giving orders, and the repeated blasts of a horn completely changed the scene. In a few moments all was noise and bustle and excitement. There was no time now for anything but a "campaign" breakfast, the gathering of horses and cattle, a general hitching up and the stowing away of pots and skillets and eating utensils and at the rising of the sun a mighty sound of tramping feet, clattering hoofs, creaking wagons and barking dogs announced that the start was made and the memorable journey commenced.

The modern exodus was no small affair for its day and generation. The moving train included with church members, their children, Negro slaves and other emigrants (who, for better protection, had attached themselves to an organized expedition), between five an six hundred souls.* It was the largest body of Virginians that ever set out for Kentucky at one time. And not only the members but nearly everything else pertaining to Craig’s Church was going. It’s official books and records, it’s simple communion service, the treasured old Bible from the pulpit – nearly everything in fact but the building itself was moving away together – an exodus so complete that for several years Upper Spottsylvania Church was without either congregation or constitution.** There were few in that long procession as it moved out upon the old Catharpin road who did not turn to give a last lingering look at that silent, sunlit, sanctuary.† How little the sad gazers dreamed

*John Taylor says there were 200 church members alone in the expedition.

**According to Semple it was subsequently "reinforced by some new recruits and resumed its constitution." Its 124th anniversary (from its first establishment) occurs November 20, 1891.

†It was afterwards improved, but Craig’s Church of today occupies the same site as in 1781, and includes much of the original handmade

that days would ever come when that quiet, unpretentious building would echo with the thunders of one of the most tremendous struggles that modern times would be destined to know.*

But the lengthening distance soon cut off the dear, familiar view as the emigrants journeyed on past one great tobacco farm after another on the way up to Orange Court House, and when they camped that night they had left behind them old Spottsylvania County about which the lifetime recollections of so many of them clustered. Their route now led them Southward by "the mountain road" past the hamlet of Gordonsville and thence to the cluster of houses known as Charlottesville which they viewed with no little curiosity as Washington had been quartering some of his captured Hessians there and Tarleton had "raided" the place only a few weeks before. Here they found themselves in the midst of the noted Piedmont country and passing under the shadow of Monticello, so famous now through the greatness of its immortal master, their road extended from Albemarle to the James through the broken but fertile area, since divided, but then entirely embraced in the County of Amherst. By this long established route the now dusty travellers soon reached the river James, and after they had slowly forded it, to the little knot of dwellings on its southern bank, where Lynchburg was to be, they camped and cooked and rested. Even here, though many miles away, the Blue Ridge could be traced along the horizon by a waving line of misty azure which grew and deepened and became more real as the emigrants advanced, and when the old red road through the rolling tobacco lands of Bedford had brought them to the village of Liberty they saw in all their majesty and beauty those "everlasting hills" of blue from which uprose in towering

material that existed in Colonial and Revolutionary times. It was injured but not destroyed during the late war.

The writer acknowledges his indebtedness to Rev. M. S. Chancellor, formerly pastor of this church; Rev. T. S. Dunnaway; Robt. T. Knox, Esq., and W. D. Foster, Esq., all of Fredericksburg, for information pertaining to the subject of this sketch.

*The church was located in the region in which occurred the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness.

splendor the cloud-capped Peaks of Otter.* The emigrants were impressed but troubled. They knew that though "distance lent enchantment to the view" this was but the beginning of that great succession of mountain barriers, which was to cut them off forever from home and old Virginia. They felt this more and more as they toiled over the Blue Ridge at Buford’s Gap, and realized it to the full when they reached the crest of the winding way and beheld the mighty and illimitable mountains that rose before them in solemn grandeur as far as the eye could reach. Some of the women were already in tears when Capt. Ellis quietly spoke to one of his Negro men whose willing hands began at once to make a well-worn banjo "talk." Like magic the signal passed along the dusky lines of chattering slaves who trudged beside the wagons with their bundles on their backs and soon one of the jolliest of the old plantation songs resounded from one end of the train to the other. The merry Negroes sang as only the old time "darkies" could sing. The children screamed with delight and the emigrants descended the mountain road with lighter hearts.

The Blue Ridge was crossed. But how silent and how solemn everything appeared and how few the signs of human life. Here and there was a cabin, but it was deserted. The scattered settlers threatened by the Indian allies of the British and by marauding Tories of the Revolution had sought the protection of the blockhouses and the forts. The emigrants had traveled far already but they had never felt so desolate as now. They had left behind them the open towns and comfortable villages. They had seen the last of the old colonial farm- house, the lumbering stagecoach and the cheerful wayside inn. No cottage window gleamed at night, no anvil rung by day. The soul depressing solitude of the wilderness was upon them.** They had

*It was the sublime scenery of this part of the Blue Ridge which so deeply impressed John Randolph as to cause him, while regarding it, to adjure his servant "never to doubt the existence of God."

**This terrible solitude - a loneliness almost palpable – was afterwards referred to by the pioneers as one of the most discouraging, misery producing features of the wilderness. It was an ever-present enemy to cheerfulness, and to the end of their journey hung over them

passed the boundary of civilization. Through a region strange and wild, and over a route which promised no brighter feature than a lonely post or a picketed station, the emigrants commenced their march for old Fort Chiswell,* more than eighty miles away. No danger threatened them as yet, and the dry weather which kept passable the roads enabled them to still retain their wagons which became more and more precious in their sight as they realized that soon they would have to give them up. How they watched over them as they forded the Roanoke; as they heard them creak and groan up the rugged ascent of the Allegheny "divide," and as they went down the mountain road and crossed New River through its craggy lines of curious rocks. A "long halt," as the Sunday rest was called, occurred upon the way but so complete was the organization of the church** that no feature of the regular services was omitted. But the thought that they were cut off from the world and the awe inspired by the overshadowing mountains affected every heart, and the deep feeling which pervaded the congregation made tremulous the voice of the pastor and lent a touching eloquence to every hymn and prayer.

like a pall. "Even the dog partook of the silence of the desert," says Doddridge, the pioneer author, in his high-flown attempt to convey some idea of the loneliness of the route.

*The name sometimes appears as "Chissel" but it was evidently named after Col. Chiswell, an English gentleman, who, according to Howe’s Virginia (p. 515), first opened lead mines there. "The fort was built," says Speed in the Wilderness Road, "in 1758, by Col. Bird, immediately after the British and Americans captured Fort Duquesne from the French." Ramsey says of it – "In 1758, Col. Bird, in pursuit of the French and Indians who had recently taken Vaux’s Fort on Roanoke, marched his regiment and built Fort Chissel and stationed a garrison in it. It stood a few miles from New River near the road leading from what is since known as Ingle’s Ferry," p. 53, Annals of Tennessee.

**Taylor in his Ten Churches says his information was that "they were constituted when they started and was an organized church on the road."

The trip from New River to Fort Chiswell, which was located about nine miles east of the present Wytheville, was soon made and the weary Baptists gathered with thankfulness about the rude stockade. They found it occupied by State militia quartered there to protect the lead mines to which the war had given increased importance, and by traders who sold supplies to the settlers who continually sought the protection of the station while on their way to the western country.* The stay at Fort Chiswell was short. The emigrants camped only long enough to barter with the traders and prepare for the changes and the difficulties which they knew must come with blazed paths and narrow traces, for they were eager to push on while the weather was good. And now came the greatest trial they had yet encountered – they gave up their wagons. They might have retained them for a little while longer but at a heavy loss, and as the trouble must be met this, the most important station on the border, was the place to dispose of them to the best advantage. So here they parted with their wagons, the only homes that had been left to the women, the little children, and the sick. They had yet to realize how much the sacrifice involved. Most of the wagon horses retained were provided with pack saddles either bought from the traders or made on the route by the emigrants themselves, and the bulk of the "plunder" from the wagons was placed on these. Not a few pieces of furniture were found at once to be entirely too inconvenient for horseback transportation and had to be disposed of. The renewed supply of bacon, meal and flour was distributed among the regular packhorses whose burdens had by this time been somewhat reduced, and a number of the small articles constantly in use were distributed among the pedestrians, both black and white, to be "toted" as each saw fit. The necessary changes and arrangements were soon made and at the blast of the horn the travelers broke camp at Fort Chiswell and filed

*It was the great rendezvous of the emigrants, being only twelve miles from "The Forks of the Road," near New River, where the route of travel from the north through the Shenandoah Valley and the other through the Blue Ridge converged. Here small parties of travelers would wait for others sure to arrive, and for mutual protection would unite forces and go as one body to Kentucky.

along the road leading through the central portion of what is now the county of Wythe. This was a very different scene from the one presented at the departure from Craig’s Church. Nearly all the men and some of the women were on foot, the riders being composed in the main of the aged, the delicate and the little children – these last occupying hickory baskets swung to the sides of horses. Such of the sick as were unable to ride were carried along on litters. The men and larger boys, each equipped with a flint-lock rifle, a powder horn, a hatchet, a hunting knife and a cup, and with a wallet containing bullets and bullet molds, wadding, tow, a tinder box and all manner of hunting tools and conveniences, guarded the train, drove the live stock and as far as possible provided wild game for the company. The women carried the young babies or bags or baskets filled with lint, bandages, medicine and such other things as might be needed by the sick, the children or in case of accident. The Negroes were variously engaged either in "toting" household "plunder," clearing obstructions from the miserable road, or leading the packhorses - many of which carried well protected and well balanced bundles and packs, while many others were loaded with farming implements, hand mills, parts of spinning wheels, skillets, kettles, and the more substantial domestic articles - all of which had to "take their luck" with wind and weather. Not a few treasured heirlooms had to share all the chances and accidents of this hazardous mode of conveyance. A great change had taken place in the appearance of the people who now moved in a lengthened line through the mountain valley of Wythe. Knee breeches and ruffled shirts, hoops and furbelows had disappeared. The costume of the tidewater Virginian of the day had given place to that of the pioneer, for no other could stand the wear and tear of such a trip. And so they marched. And the road, now that the most of them had to walk, seemed worse than ever. It was beset continually with rocks and stumps and briers and fallen trees. It led to hill after hill that must be climbed, stream after stream that must be waded, and through interminable forests of densest shade. Such travelling was especially hard upon the women, and not made any the more cheerful by the reports they had heard at Fort Chiswell of fresh signs of Indians and outlawed Tories,* nor by

*The Tories in particular were especially active in this region toward the close of the Revolution. Haywood says, "The Tories upon

the sight of the solitary graves of murdered settlers which were met with from time to time along the lonely road. Their troubles multiplied. Now whenever they camped at the close of the day, though worn out with travel, the cooking and other duties must be attended to all the same. And there were no wagons to retire to. Each time they had to wait until some sort of shelter was provided for the night. Sometimes it was a tent-like arrangement of poles and blankets and often just such a hut as could be hastily contrived by leaning thick branches against a tree or rock. Every evening the bedding, and a multitude of other things, had to be unloaded from the packhorses only to be loaded again in the morning; and to such sleeping places which never fully protected them from rain or cold must they go at last to rest their torn limbs and blistered feet. And never did the woods appear so forbidding and so treacherous as at night when the camp fires seemed only to increase the gloom, when the hooting of the dismal owl and the cries of wild animals were heard, and when the tread of the sentinel disturbed the weary pioneers with thoughts of lurking foes.

Fearing trouble, the Pilgrim Baptists made every effort to reach the stockaded cabins that clustered about Black’s Fort in the "Wolf Hills."* Foot sore but determined, they pressed on through the wild but rich and romantic valley watered by the three forks of the Holston River, and the

close of the third week of September found them safely encamped at the desired point (now known as Abingdon**) the most important

the waters of the Holston were as dangerous and as hurtful as the Indians." "The Tories (in 1781) were everywhere in arms, committing the most shocking barbarities." Civil and Political History of Tennessee, pp. 63 and 99.

*So named by Boone who camped there while out on one of his early hunting expeditions. Known afterwards as "Washington Court House" and later on as "Abingdon." Gen’l J. D. Imboden thus locates it: "Abingdon is only about eight miles north of the Tennessee State line and nearly in the center of Washington County (Va.) which is drained by three prongs, the North, Middle, and South Forks of the Holston River."

**The tradition which locates the emigrants at the Wolf Hills (Abingdon) at this time is accepted as fact. They were then – according

settlement in "the country of Holston"* which had at that time among the pioneers so marked an individuality.

The disquieting reports they had heard at Fort Chiswell were confirmed. Kentucky and the road leading to it was beset by savages and they must do like other emigrants who had arrived at the Wolf Hills before them – camp as best they could and wait for a safer time to start again. It was a terrible disappointment. The whole trip had been planned with the view of avoiding winter weather, the very calamity to Spencer’s History of the Kentucky Baptists, p. 30, "at the extreme

Western settlement of Virginia," – just what the Holston settlement of Wolf Hills was in 1781.

*"Holston," isolated but undaunted, whose settlers figured so brilliantly at King’s Mountain and to which the backwoodsmen of the contiguous regions looked so confidently for aid in time of danger, was regarded in pioneer days as a veritable district and is plainly laid down as such on Imlay’s map of 1795. Other writers refer to it in the same way. Filson (1784) speaks of the "inhabitants of Holston." Marshall mentions Boone’s road "from Holston." Ramsey has "Boonesborough relieved by forty riflemen from Holston." Reference is made to "the route through Holston," and Draper in the Battle of King’s Mountain puts Seven Mile Ford (in 1773) "on the frontier of Holston." The descriptions of it are indefinite. Imlay, p. 15, makes it "The country of Holston upon the headwaters of the same river, on the borders of Virginia and North Carolina." Winterbotham (1796) merely calls it "A narrow strip of country surrounded on all sides by mountains," while Campbell, in his History of Virginia of 1850 (p. 142) makes it identical with Washington County of that date, evidently forgetful of the great reduction in the size of that county since the Revolution by the creation of other counties from it. The Holston of pioneer days, may, with reasonable accuracy, be defined as all the country between the Clinch Mountains on the Northwest and Iron Mountain on the Southeast, extending from the sources of the three forks of the Holston River in what is now the County of Wythe down into that part of East Tennessee since known as Sullivan and Hawkins Counties. Though in the eyes of the pioneers Holston was substantially an independent district, it never set up a government of its own as did its neighbor Watauga.

which this delay might bring upon them. The women were heartsick at the prospect. Though barely three weeks had elapsed since they had started from "dear old Spottsylvania" the time had been so full of cares, discomforts and difficulties that it seemed to them almost a year. And yet only the easy part of the trip had been made, by far the hardest part was still to come, for nearly two hundred and fifty miles of that terrible solitude "The Wilderness" stretched out before them. When would they get through and how? But the same faith and courage which had distinguished the members of the now "Travelling Church" which they had exhibited in their historic struggle for religious liberty sustained them again. Huts were erected and occupied, but the undaunted pioneers determined all the same to start again as soon as possible and such poor preparations as circumstances permitted were made for the winter travel to which they might be subjected. Bullets were molded, ammunition gourds replenished, venison "jerked," pack-saddles repaired, extra deer-skin moccasins made, clothing given especial attention, and every effort was made to strengthen the sick and feeble for the hardships yet to come. Fortunately grass was abundant in the fertile Wolf Hills "clearings," and they were able to keep their horses in good condition – a matter of the very first importance. But in their anxiety to move on, the cause of the Master was not forgotten, and work was done even upon the wayside. Much to their gratification they found at the settlement a number of Baptist emigrants from their own section of Virginia, and on the 28^th of September* Mr. Craig aided in constituting them into a church. They had started for Kentucky the preceding December but had been delayed, as the Spottsylvania church now was, by threatened Indian troubles. For nearly a year they had experienced that "hope deferred which maketh the heart sick" – nearly a year of such waiting as had to be endured at an exposed and isolated station whose gallant defenders often during the Revolution had barely enough provisions to keep them alive. And Craig’s church waited also, and while it waited its pastor preached again and again, and there were baptisms, washing of feet, and many prayers. And at times there was a mighty lifting up of voices among the Negroes for "Uncle Peter" was

*Spencer’s History of Kentucky Baptists, p. 45, (extract of records of Providence Church).

with them and he set the example. Uncle Peter, afterwards known as "Old Captain,"* is the first Negro preacher mentioned in connection with the settlement of Kentucky, and was the first of his race in all probability to deliver a sermon on Kentucky soil. As Uncle Peter belonged to the Craigs (a family almost entirely composed of Baptist preachers) it accorded exactly with the fitness of things that he was a Baptist preacher himself; and he not only did well in that line, but frequently assisted Capt. Ellis as a guide, for he had traveled the road before. In fact it is more than likely that he was sent out to Kentucky when Capt. Ellis made his trip to the Blue Grass Region in 1779, for one writer** locates him about that time near the station Ellis and Grant founded, and has him returning to Virginia for the same reason that they returned, viz.: on account of Indian outrages. The savages destroyed a crop of corn Peter had planted in his master’s interest, and he evidently sought shelter at Bryant’s Station until he got a favorable chance to go home. Peter had more reasons than one for remembering the road he was now on.

It was during this halt at Abingdon that the glorious news came of the British surrender at Yorktown, and the patriotic settlers made the Wolf Hills ring with the firing of rifles and their loud rejoicing. And so passed the beautiful month of October in which the Travelling Church had hoped to complete its journey, and November set in bleak and dreary. But with the cold weather came fewer reports of Indian signs,

*Uncle Peter or "Old Captain" was a member in 1784 of the Baptist Church at head of Boone’s Creek, of which his master, Rev. Joseph Craig, was then pastor. Shortly after this Peter and his wife hired themselves and were allowed by the pioneer John Maxwell to build a cabin on his land near noted Maxwell Spring in Lexington, where Peter founded the First African Baptist Church of that city and of Kentucky. He died in 1823 at the age of ninety. Bishop’s Memoir of Rice, p. 230.

**Ford in Christian Repository 1856. A family connection of some sort seems to have existed between the Craigs, Ellises and Wallers antedating the Revolution and it is said that Capt. Ellis made his first trip to the Kentucky wilderness in the interest of all these families. They all subsequently located near each other.

and though straggling Chickamaugas still haunted the trail one danger at least had somewhat abated. The pilgrim Baptist therefore determined to "go forward" now while the Indians generally were seeking winter quarters, preferring to risk the chances of the weather to an indefinite delay and the increase of savages and troubles certain to come with the opening of spring.

So early in November the poor little huts about Black’s Fort were abandoned, heart-felt good byes were said, and at the sound of the horn the Travelling Church, with the riflemen in the van, started out shelterless from the last Virginia settlement on the route; and was soon threading in single file the narrow, wind-swept trail which the instinct of the buffalo had selected, which the Indian and pioneer had each successively adopted and which later on, science itself accepted and broadened for the railway and the telegraph. Wading through the fallen leaves of the naked woods the emigrants slowly made their way down the valley of the Holston between the giant ridges of the Alleghanies entering the region now know as Sullivan County, Tennessee; and winding round on Boone’s old Reedy Creek trail of the Wilderness Road they found themselves again in Virginia, and "on the second Lord’s day in November"* were camping on the margin of the North Fork of the Holston River.** It was a welcome rest especially to sufferers from "scald feet," neuralgia, and rheumatism, to delicate

*Christian Repository of March 1856.

**The early pioneer route from this region to Cumberland Gap is thus detailed by General J. D. Imboden, to whom the writer returns his thanks both for information and courtesies extended during the preparation of this sketch. He says, "Big Moccasin Gap, through which Boone’s old Reedy Creek trail ran, is two miles southeast of Estillville, in Clinch Mountain, where Moccasin Creek has cut it to its base. Four miles west of the Gap the creek enters the North Fork of the Holston River. Little Moccasin Creek enters Big Moccasin Creek in the North end of the Gap. Boone’s trail ran up Little Moccasin to its head eight miles, thence down Troublesome Creek four miles to the Clinch River at Speer’s Ferry, thence up Clinch River two miles to the mouth of Stock Creek, thence up Stock Creek four miles to within half a mile of

women and sick and peevish children who gathered around a multitude of blazing log heaps under the shadow of the overhanging Clinch. And there in the midst of them, while the pickets stood guard, while the Negroes watched the horses and listened, and while the riflemen leaned reverently upon their guns, the pastor of the Travelling Church recites again the story of the Israelitish wandering; and then revived their hopes and nerved them to greater endurance by reminding them in glowing words that beyond the wilderness lay the Promised Land and that there they would surely be, and that, not after forty years of punishment as of old, but long before the coming Christmas tide. His voice echoed among the beetling crags and above the rushing of the river as he prayed that the God who had sustained his ancient suffering people as they journeyed on to Canaan would also strengthen these His modern children in all the trials and afflictions that were before them. And men and women, bond and free, all joined in a solemn and appealing "amen" for of one thing at least they were certain – greater

the Southwest portal of the Natural Tunnel through which Stock Creek flows. The original trail then left the creek and ascended a tributary branch called "the Devil’s Race Path," and crossing "Tunnel Ridge" west of the tunnel came out five or six miles later at Flat Lick on the North Fork of Clinch River at the foot of Powell’s Mountain. The Devil’s Race Path was so rough that it was not long used, but a trail was opened across Tunnel Ridge about four hundred yards west of the tunnel and came down upon Stock Creek some two hundred yards above the north portal of the tunnel. It kept up the creek a mile or two and left it near the mouth of Buckeye Hollow – crossed a ridge and came out at Flat Lick. From there Powell’s Mountain was crossed at right angles the going very steep, the trail running almost straight up the mountain on the south side and straight down on the north side at the head of Wallen’s Creek that drains the valley between Wallen’s Ridge and Powell’s Mountain. Crossing Wallen’s Valley say a mile, the trail passed Wallen’s Ridge at right angles, descending into Powell’s Valley, now in Lee County. Thence the trail ran southwestwardly crossing Powell’s River and entering Poor Valley a little west of Jonesville in Lee County and thence parallel with Stone Mountain to Cumberland Gap."

trials were indeed before them. And they came quickly. That very night the Indians, attracted perhaps by the light of the fires, attacked the camp. But Capt. Ellis and his riflemen, many of whom had fought both

British and Indians often before, were not surprised; and such a stream of lead was poured into the darkness that the discomfited savages quickly retreated leaving behind them only the bloody tracks of their wounded to be revealed by the daylight which the women and children thought, in their alarm and suspense, would never come. Fortunately, the terrified Negroes clung to the horses, which were neither stolen nor stampeded, and the emigrants were enabled to resume their journey as usual. But they were uneasy – one of the pickets was missing. They found him alas when they had gone but a little distance lying across the trace before them dead and scalped; and halting, they gave their comrade and neighbor the burial of a Christian and a soldier and a weeping family and sorrowing friends left him to his last sleep by the deserted camping-place in the wilderness.

From this time on the emigrants knew little else but difficulties, privations and suffering. The weather they had so greatly dreaded now set in, and exposed alternately to rain, sleet, and snow they toiled miserably along the slippery path "soaked with blood and lined with solitary graves"* which led them straight up and down the steep and icy sides of the mighty Clinch, directly over the bare and rocky crest of Powell’s Mountain, across the slushy intervening valleys, and through scenes and regions which Boone and Clarke themselves had dreaded. For days the rain descended flooding the narrow trace, swelling the streams, increasing sickness and compelling delays at which times they had only such protection from the weather as sheds of bark or over-hanging rocks could give. Rafts had to be built at Clinch and Powell rivers which were too high to be forded, the pack horses had all to be unloaded so that they could swim them across, and they traveled when they could travel at all in clothing which they could not keep dry and with their shoes and moccasins so saturated with water that they would hardly stay upon their feet. To add to their discomfort the stock of hard

*Rev. Peter Cartwright who came over this route soon after this time says – "We rarely traveled a day after we struck the wilderness but we passed some white persons murdered and scalped by the Indians."

biscuit laid in for the trip at the Wolf Hills became moldy and useless from the dampness, and hoe cake made from corn ground in their hand-mills was their only bread as long as bread they had. Often however, for days at a stretch, until they could supply themselves with corn at such cabins as were still occupied by daring settlers, they had no bread at all* and subsisted entirely upon such wild meat as the hunters could procure and upon beef from the dwindled herd of cattle they drove along.

And thus they journeyed, moving southwestwardly through noted Powell’s Valley to "Martin’s Cabin,"** one of the last log habitations to greet them on the route before they reached the Cumberland Mountain, that white, Titanic wall which had loomed up before them in terrific and depressing grandeur day after day. About the first of December,† nearly three weeks after leaving the North Fork of the Holston River, the dauntless pioneers crossed Cumberland Gap. Nearly three weeks travelling thirty miles!‡ What a volume of suffering is expressed in that significant fact. And as they entered Kentucky over the western slope of that stupendous pass of the Cumberland, through precipitous heights, confronted by a sea of ridges and an immensity of naked and soundless woods, they knew that many a doleful mile must still be traveled. The weather had changed before they entered the Gap and their northward way through the county of Bell and over the Pine Mountains was made in the snow. But cold as it was, there were times

*The same thing, which was a frequent experience of the pioneers, is mentioned by William Calk in his journal of a trip made in 1775 over the same route. (See Speed’s Wilderness Road.) Calk says in one place that he had wild turkey for supper "and Eat it without aney bread," and in another place speaks of Col. Henderson’s company "broiling and eating beef without bread."

**Now known as "Boone’s Path," post office in the present Lee County, VA.

†Ford in the Repository.

‡Chief Justice Robertson in his Camp Madison address referring to the difficulties of this route in winter speaks of emigrants travelling "two or three miles a day."

when they dared not kindle fires when they camped for fear of the Indians who continually gave them anxiety and trouble. One of the worst experiences was at Cumberland Ford where the men had to wade through the icy water breast deep and travel ‘till night in wet and freezing clothes. Subsisting mainly upon meat with little bread and no salt they made their way through the heavy cane breaks skirting the Cumberland River,* past the silent site of Barboursville in Knox, and following the trace directly over the spot now occupied by the court house in London, Laurel County, crossed Rockcastle River at the foot of Wild Cat Mountain and camped on the rugged margin of its rock-gorged bed. The road all the way from Cumberland Gap to this point was so bad, the interminable hills so icy and the wind so cutting that the harassed pioneers could struggle over but few miles each day and time and again they were troubled and delayed by runaway horses** which saturated their packs by plunging through streams or lost them entirely in the interminable cane brakes. But with all their trials their hearts were lighter for the last great mountain ridge was passed, the interior of Kentucky was reached, and though they were yet fifty miles from their destination, blockhouses were on the route and old friends were waiting to greet them at their journey’s end. The weather moderated while they were at their Rockcastle camp and inspired by the bright sunshine the irrepressible Negroes sung by the hour, increasing the hope and cheerfulness of all.

Again the Pilgrim Church moved on and about five miles north of Rockcastle River, where the buffalo path led out toward the already famous Boonesborough, the pioneers entered Skagg’s Trace, so recently stained with the blood of murdered settlers, and followed this branch of the Wilderness Road to the place now known as Mt. Vernon.

*Calk, in his journal, complains of the "terrible canebrakes" along the river.

**One of the greatest drawbacks travelling pioneers had to contend with. Calk says in one place "My hors got scard ran away threw Down the Saddel Bags and broke three of our powder goards and Abrams beast burst open a walet of corn and lost a good Deal and made a turrabel flustration amongst the Reast of the Horses." See Journal, p. 35, of "Wilderness Road."

Here, as often before, the weary little children were transferred from the cramped hickory baskets on the horses to the shoulders of the sturdy Negro men who trudged along with them with infinite good nature to the next halting place at the head of "Dick’s River." At this spot, betrayed perhaps by the campfires, they were again attacked by the Indians who only succeeded however in carrying off some of the horses and cattle. There was no sleep that night in the camp and by daylight a breakfast of "jerk" and corn bread had been eaten, the packing all done, and the emigrants were marching toward English Station eight miles away which they reached without further molestation and where they halted for the night with sighs of relief. They had now reached the anxiously looked-for chain of Kentucky forts and were nearing the lands on which many of them expected to settle. The long journey was drawing to a close.

The next morning with lighter steps and brighter faces than they had ever exhibited since they crossed the Blue Ridge they passed the palisaded cabins of "The Crab Orchard" and filing northwestwardly through the woods and cane brakes headed for Logan’s Fort near the spot where Stanford was afterwards established. The news of their coming had gone before them. The settlers, some of whom were their own friends and kindred from Virginia, had gathered to meet them. And when they appeared in sight of the stockade they were greeted with a firing of rifles and shouts of welcome which soon changed into a confused but touching scene of hearty hand-shaking, affectionate embraces, eager inquiries, tears of joy and repeated exclamations of delight. The Negroes started up a favorite old plantation hymn which they sung with great fervor, a shaking of heads and a clapping of hands; and a multitude of lean and excited dogs barked and capered around in excess of sympathy. The settlers with that generous hospitality which so distinguished them made them as comfortable as their limited circumstances would permit; and camped once more about friendly walls, the emigrants could build fires to their hearts content; and gathered around the blazing log heaps, they rejoiced together that their wanderings were nearly over and that they would soon enjoy the luxury of permanent homes. But no time could be wasted, the Pilgrim Baptists halted at Logan’s Station only long enough to enable chosen men to select a suitable place of settlement, which was soon found. They determined to locate on a little tributary of Dick’s River, now known

as Gilbert’s Creek,* two miles and a half southeast of the then forest-covered site of the present town of Lancaster and in that part of the original County of Lincoln which now constitutes the County of Garrard. The choice was approved by the waiting emigrants, and then for the last time the pack horses were loaded for a march, for the last time a blast of the old familiar horn signaled these children of a modern Israel to "go forward," and amid farewell rifle salutes and many a "God speed" from the fort, they "went up to possess the land." Dick’s River was crossed, the chosen spot in the wild western Canaan was reached, and there six hundred miles away from the comforts of sea-board civilization by a stream which for ages had refreshed the unstartled deer and in a forest unbroken from the birth of time, the final halt was made and the wanderings of The Travelling Church were over. The long and terrible trip was ended at last but those who struggled through it remembered it forever; for each could truly say, as did the devoted Bishop Asbury who followed them in winter later on, "How much I have suffered in this journey is known only to God and myself." How many died on the way, how many were slain by savage foes, and how many were injured for life by exposure no records remain to tell; nor is there a list extant of the heroic men and women who survived the perils of the wilderness and planted the banner of their faith at Gilbert’s Creek. The names of some of them, however, have been secured and are herewith appended,** and many of these names, it will be seen, have been perpetuated by old and prominent families of Kentucky.

*Supposed to have been named after Thomas Gilbert, first pastor of Buffalo (Va.) Baptist Church, though if he was a member of the expedition the fact, like so many others connected with the enterprise, was not made a matter of record.

**These names were obtained from family records, "Ford’s Repository," "Virginia Baptists," "Ten Churches," and "Spencer’s History of Kentucky Baptists." In most cases only the family name was given without either the names or number of the members of the family. The names secured are listed in three columns in the footnote section on the next page:

Spurred on by cold weather and dire necessity the sturdy Baptists made a "clearing" in the leafless woods at Gilbert’s Creek and established "Craig’s Station" on land afterwards owned by John Simpson.* And there in that lonely outpost before the close of the second Sunday in December, 1781,** they gathered and worshipped around the same old Bible they had used in Spottsylvania and were preached to by their pastor, Lewis Craig, and by William Marshall, uncle of the celebrated Chief Justice Marshall of Virginia. And so met

Allen Elly Price

Asher Eastin† Robinson, & wife

Bledsoe Garrard Ramsey

Bowman Goodloe Rucker

Barrow Hunt Shackelford

Burbridge Hart Shipp

Buckner Hickman Shotwell

Craig, Toliver & wife Hickerson Singleton

Craig, Lewis Martin Smith

Craig, Joseph Moore Sanders

Cave, William Morton Stuart

Curd Marshall Todd

Carr Morris Thompson

Creath Mitchum Walton

Dudley† Noel Woolfolk

Dupuy Payne Watkins

Darnaby† Parrish, Timothy Waller

Dedman Parrish, James Ware

Ellis, William,† and Pitman Woolridge

Ellis, family of 5 other Preston Young

members

*W. D. Hopper’s sketch.

**Repository, March 1856.

†The names Darnaby, Eastin, and Ellis are among the seven family names of the eight people who formed the constitution of Bryan Station Baptist Church in 1786. In addition Dudley is the family name of the first pastor of Bryan Station: Ambrose Dudley, who came shortly after the organization and accepted the call to the pastorate [editors note].

the first church that ever assembled in central Kentucky* - a church that had been organized in a distant region long before and whose strange transplanting constitutes one of the most remarkable episodes connected with the early settlement of the Commonwealth.

The fort being finished the settlers proceeded to locate land about it and cabins were soon put up outside the stockade. A church was one of the first buildings thus erected. It was situated half a mile south of the fort on a hill now included in the property of Thomas Edmonson.** This hill, which was cleared of trees, was steep enough for purposes of defence and from it danger signals at the station could be easily and quickly observed. The church, like the stockade, was loop-holed. The settlers brought their rifles with them when they came to worship, and when they bowed at prayer within – armed sentries watched without. Here they joined in the services of a faith as simple as it was sincere; which knew neither creed, formula, nor abstract; and which had for its watchword "the Bible and the Bible alone;" and here their beloved pastor preached to them with faithfulness and with power, and comforted them in their manifold afflictions. For the winter of their arrival brought hard living indeed to men and women from the comfort-able homes of old Virginia, and their troubles increased as the season advanced. One of the settlers, Miles Hart, was killed by the savages close to the church which he had doubtless helped to build, and his wife

*Referring to the pioneer Baptists of Kentucky Davidson says – "To them belongs the credit of having been the first to inaugurate the regular public worship of God and the organization of churches." p. 86, Hist. Pres. Church in Ky. Desultory worship, which preceded the organization of churches, dates back to May 28, 1775, when Rev. John Lythe of the Episcopal church and a delegate from Harrodsburg to the Transylvania legislature conducted an outdoor religious services at Boonesborough. [This last is in dispute as far as being the "first" preaching service in Kentucky. Baptists were here in numbers before this, and it is unthinkable that Baptists, a preaching people, did not hold some open-air service before this. We concede it may be the first known or recorded event: editors note].

**Hopper. The church and its first pastor are mentioned in the "Song of Lancaster," by Mrs. E. D. Potts.

and children were dragged off to a long captivity.* Other tragedies followed, and some of the pioneers who had marched unharmed with Craig and Ellis through all the perils of the wilderness fell at Estill’s Defeat and were seen no more in the little log church on the hill. But in spite of privations and in spite of the tomahawk and the scalping knife Lewis Craig pushed on in the work of his Master, not only at Gilbert’s Creek but at other frontier settlements also, for in 1782, that year of Kentucky’s gloom and sorrow, he gathered and constituted a church at the Forks of Dick’s River and preached at Squire Boone’s station on Clear Creek near the present Shelbyville, the first sermon ever delivered in Shelby County or in that part of the State.** But the pioneer Baptists, thrifty as well as devoted, were soon attracted by the magnificent land in what is now so widely known as "The Blue Grass Region" where Capt. Ellis had already settled, and early in the fall of 1783 Craig and most of his congregation moved to South Elkhorn, about five miles from Lexington, where they established the first worshipping assembly of any kind organized north of the Kentucky River.† This removal would have been a death blow to the church at Gilbert's Creek but for timely reinforcements from the old "stamping ground" in Virginia. Craig and his party had barely reached South Elkhorn when William E. Waller, brother of the long-ago converted "Swearing Jack," and himself a Baptist minister, with a number of others of the same faith arrived at Gilbert’s Creek‡ from Spottsylvania County, and about the same time the body of Baptists from the adjoining county of Orange that Mr. Craig had constituted at the Wolf Hills (Abingdon) came safely through the wilderness and settled near the station.^§ For the best part of three years they had watched and

*They remained in captivity five years when they were ransomed by traders and returned to their friends. Hopper’s Sketch.

**Dr. Ford in Repository, 1856.

†History of Ten Churches.

‡Sketch by Henry Waller.

§This church, according to its record, still extant, seems to have started from the Holston settlement on "the first day of September, 1783," and to have removed from Gilbert’s Creek "to the north side of the Kentucky River" in the spring of 1784. Its pioneer members settled

waited at the little post on the Holston for a favorable chance to set out on the blood-stained and Indian-haunted trail to Kentucky – a chance which came with the formal ending of the Revolutionary War in 1783. Later on in the same year John Taylor (the Baptist minister and historian), with his family and servants, also reached the settlement after a three month trip from Virginia;* and thus, alternately weakened and strengthened and sometimes reorganized, the church at Gilbert’s Creek existed during the entire period of immigration, and with fortunes still varying, for many years thereafter. It declined during the late great war between the States, and by 1865 the brick house which had succeeded the little log church on the hill had become a ruin and ceased to be used. Later on, the congregation itself disbanded, and now little remains to mark the site of the most notable sanctuary of the early Kentucky pioneers but the graves and gravestones of its departed

on Howard’s Creek in what is now Clark County, where the church, first known as "Howard’s Creek" and later as "Providence," has kept up its organization for more than a century.

*He started from Virginia in the fall, coming by water, but winter had set in by the time he reached "Bear Grass" (Louisville). He says of his journey from this point to Gilbert’s Creek – "Two of my horses were packed and the other my wife rode, with as much lumber besides as the beast could bear. I had four black people, one man and three smaller ones. The packhorses were led – one by myself and the other by my man. The trail, what there was, being so narrow and bad we had no chance but to wade through all the mud, rivers and creeks we came to. Salt River, with a number of its large branches, we had to deal with often. Those waters being flush we often must wade to our middle – the weather cold. Those struggles often made us forget the dangers we were in from the Indians. We only encamped in the woods one night where we could only look for protection from the Lord. One Indian might have defeated us; for though I had a rifle I had very little skill to use it. After six days painful travel of this kind we arrived at Craig’s Station a little before Christmas and about three months after our start from Virginia. Through all this rugged travel my wife was in a very helpless state; for about one month after our arrival my son, Ben, was born." History of Ten Churches, pp. 13-14.

members in the old church yard that surrounded it. Is there a spot in this Commonwealth more worthy of an enduring memorial than that silent hill top where finally rested the ark of "The Travelling Church" – a memorial to perpetuate the story of that heroic march and in honor of those undaunted champions of civil and religious liberty, the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers of the West.

And Craig and Ellis – would any account of this remarkable expedition be complete which did not include something more of them?

Mr. Craig was pastor for nine years of the church he organized at South Elkhorn* in 1783; and though during part of that time he was actively engaged in accumulating Blue Grass acres and in speculations which impaired both his happiness and his estate, he seems never to have lost his zeal for his Master’s cause. His own congregation continued large, and he was connected with the establishment of most of the early churches in the Elkhorn Association, "the oldest fraternity of the kind west of the Allegheny Mountains."** In 1792 he removed to Mason County, Ky., and settled on a farm he bought about three miles from Dover.† The next year his preaching resulted in the founding of the old Bracken Church near the neighboring town of Minerva, of which church he was the first pastor, and through his efforts several other congregations in that part of the State were subsequently gathered and organized, and he is justly styled "the father of the Bracken Association" constituted in 1799. Mr. Craig lived in Mason County for nearly thirty-three years and there ended his long and useful life. One writer‡ says of him "His last days were distinguished by increased spirituality of mind. His trials had been greatly sanctified to his good and like a little child he yielded quietly to the will of his Father." He seems to have predicted his own death,

*Preaching first in the woods, and then in his gristmill until a church building was erected. See Dr. Basil Manly’s interesting sketch of South Elkhorn Church in Address of 1877.

**Spencer.

†The farm is near the turnpike leading from Dover to Minerva (both of which are in Mason County) and is now owned by Andrew Tobin.

‡J. B. Taylor in Va. Bapt. Ministers, p. 88.

which occurred at the home of his granddaughter, Mrs. Craig Childs, who lived in the old Bracken Church neighborhood. "He died suddenly," says John Taylor,* ‘of which he was forewarned saying ‘I am going to such a house to die,’ and with solemn joy he went on to the place, and with little pain left the world." In the case of Lewis Craig "the way of the world" is sadly exemplified. He was once "the great exhorter" and the most notable figure among the pioneer Baptists of Kentucky, but for nearly three quarters of a century the year of his death has been misstated,** and the place of his burial has almost been forgotten. He died in the summer of 1825† in the eighty-fifth year of his age, and was interred on the farm in Mason County already mentioned. His grave can be clearly identified, but no stone marks the spot where sleeps the man whose name is interwoven with the history of many Baptist churches – the champion of liberty of conscience who preached through prison bars – the pastor of famous Travelling Church.

Captain William Ellis tarried at Gilbert’s Creek, after the arrival of the Travelling Church there, until the following spring (1782) when he was joined by his old friend Col. John Grant, and together they made a second, and this time successful effort, to establish themselves in the center of the Blue Grass Region from whence they had been driven by the savages in 1779. The colony which now left Gilbert’s Creek was mainly composed of kinsmen and connections of Capt. Ellis‡ and a goodly number of their Spottsylvania neighbors, all of whom had come with him through the wilderness. They went directly to Lexington station and from thence the majority of the company, under the leadership of Capt. Ellis, pushed on to the headwaters of Boone’s Creek and there planted the settlement known as Chilesburg or "the David’s Fork neighborhood."^§ But they paid in suffering for all the land they

*History of Ten Churches.

**We have never seen either a biography or an encyclopedia that gave the year of his death correctly.

†The full date could not be secured. His will was probated in the Mason County Court at the September term, 1825.

‡The names of many of them are given in the list of names at the foot of page 24.

§History of Fayette County, Ky., p. 232.

settled. They had hardly built and occupied their cabins when they were compelled to seek shelter from the Indians in the adjoining forts. It was the year of "the great invasion," and they only returned to their log homes at David’s Fork after the men had done their part at the siege of Bryant’s Station* and at the battle of the Blue Licks, and after the women had nursed their wounded and agonized over their dead. In 1784, when another invasion was expected, a military conference was held at Boone’s Station** a few miles from David’s Fork, and at the insistence of Daniel Boone,† Capt. Ellis was designated to command a force of pioneers; but fortunately the threatened incursion did not take place. Shortly after this Capt. Ellis’s old friends and neighbors William E. Waller, Ambrose Dudley, and Joseph Craig followed him to Fayette County and aided in the establishment of some of its earliest churches. Capt. Ellis was one of the original members of the Bryant’s Station (Baptist) Church founded May, 1786 and of David’s Fork founded August, 1801, of which congregation his descendants and family connections subsequently formed a large part [founding dates: editors note]. In 1786 he was married to Elizabeth Shipp. His experience as a Revolutionary soldier caused him to be repeatedly called upon in times of danger. He took part in the campaign against the Ohio Indians; served in the fall of 1790 with Col. Trotter in Harmar’s celebrated expedition, and the next year shared in the horrors and sufferings of the disastrous defeat of St. Clair.‡ He and Lewis Craig never forgot each other. To the day of his death the warmest friendship existed between them; and in the name of his son, Lewis Craig Ellis,^§ the old Indian

*See Addendum, and historical marker around the spring not but a few hundred yards from Bryan Station Baptist Church – and view Lewis Craig’s name, among others who were there at that siege, as well as the historical account inscribed there in granite [editors note].

**History of Fayette County, Ky., p. 484.

†Shortly before this Daniel Boone had lost his twenty three year old son Israel Boone at the Battle of Blue Licks chiefly due to a lack of good military leadership in that expedition [editors note].

‡History of Fayette County, Ky., p. 486.

§His portrait by Park, interesting as one of the first ever painted in the Western Country, is now owned by a descendant, Mrs. Ranck.

fighter perpetuated in his family the memory of his indomitable pastor and his comrade in the march of suffering through "the wilderness." "He was a man of remarkable energy and fine character, and quick to encourage every worthy enterprise. His hospitality was proverbial, and dispensed with the liberality of a pioneer Kentuckian. He died in the year 1800 and was interred in the family graveyard upon his farm."* And there under the blue grass of the county he helped to settle sleeps the Revolutionary soldier, the old pioneer, and the military leader of The Travelling Church.

*History of Fayette County, Ky., p.496