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Shubal Stearns and Sandy Creek Baptist Church

Founded by Shubal Stearns, in 1755, Sandy Creek Baptist Church is located at 4765 Sandy Creek Church Road, Liberty. Stearns’s obelisk tombstone stands in the church cemetery. Historical monuments on the grounds provide fascinating glimpses into the Sandy Creek heritage. The year 2005 marked the 250th anniversary of Stearns’s organization of the church. In 2015, Sandy Creek Baptist erected a new, picturesque church, situated next door to an 1802 log meetinghouse (owned and used for many years by Primitive Baptists). A short distance from the site, a historical marker, at the intersection of Ramseur Julian Road and Old Liberty Road, describes Sandy Creek as the “Mother of Separate Baptist churches across the South.” (See Chapter 15.).

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

Featured Image Credit: Reformation. Backwoods North Carolina Anabaptists/Revivalists Rebel Against Crown and Anglicanism: 1771. reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2012/07/backwoods-north-carolina.html.

Patrick Henry’s Grave / Red Hill

The grave of Virginia Governor Patrick Henry, a friend of persecuted Baptists, is at Patrick Henry National Memorial, 1497 Red Hill Road, Brookneal, VA 24528. This beautiful plantation is called Red Hill.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

 

Patrick Henry (1736-1799) loved freedom – risking his life and being called a traitor to King George III. He loved his family – quitting at the peak of his political power to spend time with them. He respected devout Christians – but was he a Christian himself?

Patrick Henry, appears to have a similar testimony to later president, James K Polk. Both had a devout mother, and a less than spiritually enthusiastic father. Samuel Davies said Patrick’s father was “more intimately conversant with his Horace than with his Bible.” Both Polk and Henry had a lifelong openness to the gospel, and yet as best as we can tell, neither committed their life to Christ until near the end of their life.

Patrick Henry grew up under the First Great Awakening – well acquainted with the Biblical text, but it was not until the Second Great Awakening that began at Hampden-Sydney (a college Henry helped start) that some researchers think he was converted.

So how did the life of Patrick Henry change around the time of this revival? According to his grandson, William Wirt Henry, president of the American Historical Association, and vice president of the American Bar Association,

“He gave himself now more than ever to the study of the Bible.… The sermons of [Pastor Sherlock], he declared, had removed all his doubts of the truth of Christianity….One of his neighbors going to see him found him reading the Bible. Holding it up in his hand, he said: “This book is worth all the books that ever were printed, and it had been my misfortune that I have never found time to read it with the proper attention and feeling till lately. I trust in the mercy of Heaven that it is not yet too late. It was his habit to seat himself in his dining-room every morning directly after rising, and read his Bible, and as his children would pass him for the first time he would raise his eyes from his book and greet them with a “good morrow.”       

In 1796, a few years before his death, he wrote to his daughter Betsy:

“Amongst other strange things said of me, I hear it is said by the deists that I am one of their number; and indeed, that some good people think I am no Christian. This thought gives me much more pain than the appellation of tory; because I think religion of infinitely higher importance than politics; and I find much cause to reproach myself that I have lived so long and have given no decided proofs of my being a Christian. But, indeed, my dear child, this is a character I prize far above all this world has or can boast. And amongst all the handsome things I hear said of you, what gives me the greatest pleasure is to be told of your piety and steady virtue.”

William Wirt Henry records that as he lay dying, he said, “Oh, how wretched should I be at this moment, if I had not made my peace with God!”

As his wife and children read his will, he assigned various lands to his children, cash gifts to his daughters, resources for his wife to raise the remaining children, and then, closed with these words:

“This is all the inheritance I give to my dear family. The religion of Christ will give them one which will make them rich indeed.”

Near his will, there was a sheet of paper sealed inside a wax envelope. For a man who left few paper records, this was maybe the most significant record he would leave. The sheet of paper was a copy of the Stamp Act Resolutions – his five bold declarations from 1765, back when he wasn’t even thirty years old, that motivated George Washington and Richard Henry Lee to side with the Patriots, and led to the independence of America.

On the back of the resolutions was his last words to his country. A handwritten warning to future generations.

“Whether this [revolution] will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. Reader! whoever thou art, remember this; and in thy sphere practise virtue thyself, and encourage it in others.”

 

Featured Image Credit: Wikipedia contributors. File:Red Hill Charlotte County Virginia 1907.jpg – Wikipedia. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Hill_Charlotte_County_Virginia_1907.jpg.

Chesterfield County Museum

The Chesterfield County Museum, at 6813 Mimms Loop, is a replica of the 1749 courthouse where magistrates, during 1770-74, sentenced seven Baptist preachers to jail for preaching Christ without state-church approval. See the section, “Virginia Baptist Preachers Imprisoned in Chesterfield Jail 1770-74,” in Chapter 15.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

From website:

The Chesterfield Museum is a brick reproduction of the colonial courthouse of 1749. It sits on a tract of land that was known in the 18th Century as “Coldwater Run”.   The County was a rural community and the Courthouse of 1749 was not only a social gathering spot, it was a political nexus.  Speeches, horse trading, games, drinking, and fistfights were standard events of each court day.  The old courthouse stood until 1917 when it was razed for a new “courthouse” Preservationists could not save the building.  The courthouse-museum complex was a project conceived by The Bermuda Ruritan Club and later a total of ten other Ruitan Clubs were involved in the project.  Thanks to these Ruritans, the Museum was built in 1977 and officially dedicated on July 4, 1980.

 

Featured Image Credit: Photo: Chesterfield County Museum Housed in a Reconstruction of the 1750 Courthouse. www.hmdb.org/PhotoFullSize.asp?PhotoID=65499.

1728 Essex County Courthouse

In 1774, Baptists in Tappahannock established the earliest Baptist church in Essex County-Piscataway (now Mt. Zion) Baptist, on Dunbrooke Road. On that same day, inside the local Essex County Courthouse, which is now the oldest courthouse building in Virginia, officials sentenced fines and imprisonments to the three men who preached the church’s opening service – John Waller, John Shackleford, and Robert Ware. Their crime was “preaching and expounding the Scriptures contrary to law.” Shackledford and Ware spent eight days in the local jail. Waller spent fourteen. This 1728 Essex County Courthouse, with its thick walls of Flemish bond brick, still stands on the corner of US 360 and US 17. In a turn of irony, from 1878 to 2007, this same courthouse would serve as a church. In 1875, Frank Brown Beale had founded Tappahannock’s Centennial Baptist Church, named for the forthcoming, one-hundredth anniversary of America’s founding. In 1878, the church purchased the courthouse and added a bell tower to the front. Near the location of Beale’s pulpit, magistrates had condemned Waller, Shackleford, and Ware for preaching Christ. These same dense walls, which had resounded condemnation against preaching, would reverberate the gospel for 130 years. When Frank Beale died in 1908, the church changed its name to Beale Memorial Baptist. During 2004-7, the church moved into new facilities on Tidewater Trail, just north of town, and sold the 1728 courthouse building back to Essex County.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

Featured Image Credit: AlbertHerring, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Meditation Rock / Grave of George Washington’s Mother

Marked by a tall obelisk at 1500 Washington Avenue, is the grave of George Washington’s mother. Near the obelisk, an inscription on Meditation Rock says of her, “Here Mary Ball Washington prayed for the safety of her son and country during the dark days of the Revolution.” Mary’s home is at 1200 Charles Street.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

 

I came across an interesting postcard on eBay, entitled, Meditation Rock, Mary Washington’s Favorite Spot, Fredericksburg, Va.

The scene looked very relaxing, a couple of granite boulders in the middle of trees on a grass hill.

On the back was the description of what made this place significant:

A beautiful spot under the shade of large oak trees, where Mary Washington (George’s mother) used to spend time Bible reading for quiet, religious thought. Nearby is the monument erected by her countrywomen, marking the place where she was buried in 1789.

The historical marker on the site shares what her “quiet, religious thoughts” were:

Mary Ball Washington prayed for the safety of her son and country during the dark days of the Revolution.

President Andrew Jackson started the construction of the memorial obelisk in 1833, which wouldn’t be completed for 60 years!

“I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man; And keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses, that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest, and whithersoever thou turnest thyself:”

(1 Kings 2:2-3)

 

From postcard:

Mary Washington’s favorite retreat for reading the Bible and quiet religious thought. Situated under the shade of a beautiful grove of oak trees just back of her monument.

 

Featured Image Credit: Photo: Meditation Rock and Marker. www.hmdb.org/PhotoFullSize.asp?PhotoID=28348.

Oxford Martyrs Memorial

See the Martyrs Memorial, a stone monument, near Balliol College, at the intersection of St. Giles, Magdalen, and Beaumont Streets. The Memorial commemorates Oxford’s Reformer-martyrs, Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, and Hugh Latimer. The earlest Baptists were products of the Reformation.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

5 Minutes in Church History

 

To the Glory of God
And in Grateful Commemoration
of His Servants
Thomas Cranmer
Nicholas Ridley
Hugh Latimer
Prelates of the Church
of England
Who Near This Spot
Yielded Their Bodies
To Be Burned
Bearing Witness to the Sacred Truths
Which They Had
Affirmed and Maintained
Against the Errors
of the Church of Rome
And Rejoicing That
To Them It Was Given
Not Only to Believe in Christ
But Also to Suffer for His Sake
this Monument was Erected
by Public Subscription
in the Year of our Lord God
M.DCCCXLI

 

Featured Image Credit: File:Martyrs Memorial Oxford 20050317.jpg – Wikimedia Commons. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martyrs_Memorial_Oxford_20050317.jpg.

Tomb of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes

Inside the nearby Southwark Cathedral is the tomb of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, a translator of the King James Bible. Be sure to see the John Harvard Chapel.

Near the Southwark Cathedral is a full-sized reconstruction of the warship, Golden Hinde, used by Sir Francis Drake when he circumnavigated the world in 1577-80.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

Featured Image Credit: Unidentified painter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mayflower Steps Memorial

Visit the Mayflower Memorial at the Barbican, from where the Pilgrims, in 1620, departed for the New World. Visit the Mayflower Museum just down the street.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

Plaque:

On the 6th of September, 1620, in the Mayorality of Thomas Fownes, after being “kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling,” the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from Plymouth in the Mayflower, in the Providence of God to settle in New Plymouth, and to lay the Foundation of the New England States The ancient Causey whence they embarked was destroyed not many Years afterwards, but the Site of their Embarkation is marked by the Stone bearing the name of the Mayflower in the pavement of the adjacent Pier. This Tablet was erected in the Mayorality of J.T. Bond 1891, to commemorate their Departure, and the visit to Plymouth in July of that Year of a number of their Descendants and representatives.

 

Featured Image Credit: RobertBFC at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

Newgate Prison

In the back of Amen Court, in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral, stands the only surviving wall of Newgate Prison, where many Baptists suffered and died.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

Famous Prisoners according to Wikipedia

  • John Bradford, religious reformer – burned at the stake at Newgate in 1555
  • William Penn, religious scholar, and later the Quaker who founded the colony of Pennsylvania – held in Newgate during his 1670 trial for preaching before a gathering in the street
  • John Rogers, Bible translator and religious reformer – at Newgate after conviction of heresy in 1554, and burnt at the stake in 1555[25]

 

Featured Image Credit: George Shepherd (1784-1862), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ye Olde Yellow Meeting House

Ye Olde Yellow Meeting House, located on Yellow Meetinghouse Road, off Route 526, dates to about 1737. Its earliest records, beginning in 1766, are in a 165-page handwritten “Church Book: Giving an Account of ye First Settlement & Progress of the Baptists at Crosswicks, or Upper Freehold.”  In 1766, its forty-seven members organized into Crosswicks Baptist Church. In 1773, its name changed to Upper Freehold Baptist Church, located in Imlaystown since 1855. Since the 1991 restoration of Ye Olde Yellow Meeting House, including its yellow paint, it has accommodated special occasions for the congregation. The word Ye in its title should be pronounced the. Early movable type used the letter Y like the first two letters of the Anglo-Sacon character known as the thorn. Common abbreviations include ye (“the”), yt (“that”), and yn (“then”).

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

 

Featured Image Credit: Photo: Ye Olde Yellow Meeting House. www.hmdb.org/PhotoFullSize.asp?PhotoID=294458.

Newport Historical Society

Newport Historical Society (NHS) houses the first Seventh-Day Baptist church in America. In 1671, Stephen Mumford led a small group of First Baptist to establish this church. In 1884, the NHS bought the Seventh-Day Baptists’ 1730 wooden chapel. In 1915, the NHS moved the elegant chapel from Barney Street to the rear of their headquarters, at 82 Touro Street. Here, the NHS encased the chapel in brick and incorporated it into their facility. More restoration took place in 2009. (See Chapter 12.).

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

Featured Image Credit: Wikipedia contributors. File:Sabbatarian Meeting House.jpg – Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sabbatarian_Meeting_House.jpg.

United Baptist Church

United Baptist Church, John Clarke Memorial, at 30 Spring Street, was founded in 1644 by John Clarke. It was America’s second Baptist church. Clarke was co-founder of Rhode Island and an early defender of liberty of conscience.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

Featured Image Credit: “Home – United Baptist Church.” United Baptist Church, 27 June 2024, unitedbaptistnewport.com.

The First Baptist Church in America

First Baptist Church, founded by Roger Williams in 1638, was the earliest Baptist Church in America. Erected in 1775, its present building is at 75 N Main St. Its twelfth pastor, James Manning, was founder and president of nearby Brown University.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

Featured Image Credit: Djb. “Religious Freedom 101:  a Lesson From Old Places.” MORE TO COME…, 20 Apr. 2015, moretocome.net/2015/04/19/religious-freedom-101-a-lesson-from-old-places.

First Baptist Church of North Middleboro

Once known as “Backus Memorial Baptist Church,” First Baptist Church of North Middleboro, Massachusetts, is now in its third building since Isaac Backus founded it in 1756. It stands at the intersection of Plymouth and Bedford Streets.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

Featured Image Credit: KJV Churches. “First Baptist Church of North Middleboro, MA » KJV Churches.” KJV Churches, 29 June 2022, www.kjvchurches.com/churches/united-states/massachusetts/middleborough/first-baptist-church-of-north-middleboro.

Haystack Prayer Meeting Memorial

At Williams College (Congregational), a twelve-foot-high marble monument, called the Haystack Prayer Meeting Memorial, commemorates “The Birthplace of American Foreign Missions 1806,” out of which came Baptists Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice. See the section, “Haystack Prayer Meeting at Williams College (1806),” in Chapter 17.

copyrighted and used by permission from David Beale, Baptist History in England and America: Personalities, Positions, and Practices

 

 

 

The Second Great Awakening was in progress. The Cane Ridge Camp Meeting was a few years past in 1801. Williams College, the second Massachusetts college, was just 13 years old.

Samuel Mills‘ father was a pastor, and his church was impacted by this Great Awakening. Inspired by John Eliot, David Brainerd, and William Carey, he was burdened. He soon found fellow-minded students Harvey Loomis, Byram Green, Francis L. Robbins, and James Richards. Twice a week they met to pray.

In August 1806, they were discussing missions when a storm came. As the thunder and rain poured down, they hid under a haystack. They discussed sending people around the world to accomplish the Great Commission. Mills is reported to have said “We can do this, if we will!”

The “Brethren” as they were called, would graduate from Williams College (Samuel Mills wasn’t allowed to march as his grades were poor). Many went on to Andover Theological Seminary, where a young man named Adoniram Judson would join their ranks.

Burdened for India, they approached the Congregational church leadership and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions began June 28, 1810. Over 1,000 missionaries would go to foreign lands in less than fifty years. Judson was one of the first to depart with a few others in 1812 for Burma, and en route to Burma would discover that he was a Baptist! – and would send Luther Rice back to America to form a Baptist missionary society that would become the Southern Baptist Convention.

Samuel Mills would travel widely focusing on home missions, and finding New Orleans without any Bibles for purchase, started the ball rolling that led to the formation in 1816 of the American Bible Society.

Concerned for would-be African-American ministers, he raised money for a new school. After traveling to Africa for mission work, he died on the return voyage to America and was buried at sea at just 35 years of age.

Mark 16:15 “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

Bicentennial of monument (Global Ministries)

CBN Feature on the Haystack Revival

 

Feature Image Credit: Daderot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons