Old Culpeper Jail

Early congregations also gathered at their own risk, as when the well-bred men of Culpeper County galloped their horses through a crowd that had formed to hear the Reverend James Ireland preach from his cell while incarcerated for disturbing the peace over the winter of 1769–1770. The reasons for such opposition ranged widely, from a critique of adult baptism and other practices related to biblical literalness to concern that the fast promotion of uneducated preachers inappropriately elevated men who could be socially dangerous in leadership roles.

Culpeper was not very friendly toward Baptists and considered them to be dissenters. Ten prominent Baptist preachers, among them James Ireland, Elijah Craig, John Pickett, and William McClannahan, were jailed in Culpeper for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Ireland, a young Baptist preacher in his early twenties, was imprisoned and tortured five months in the Culpeper jail located at that time on the corner of East and Davis Streets. Nathaniel Saunders, another local pastor, showed remarkable courage to co-sponsor the Mt. Poney Baptist Church in Culpeper. He, too, was later imprisoned in Culpeper jail in September of 1773. Perhaps no single fact in early Virginia Baptist history is more widely known than that the third meeting house of the Mt. Poney-Culpeper Baptist Church was built on the site of that old colonial jail. John Leland served as pastor of the Mt. Poney Church from 1777-1778. He was intensely interested in religious liberty.