[JFR]
We now will take a look at the churches that were
started in Maine and South Caroline. The two were
interconnected in their beginnings and here we will
see why. Again, we reference Newman as our source.
The First Baptists of Maine and South Caroline
[Newman]
In January, 1682, the Boston Baptist church received
a letter written on behalf of a body of Baptists who
had gathered themselves for Christian worship at
Kittery, in the province of Maine, by Humphrey
Church wood, and borne, it would seem, by one of
the members of this body, William Screven by
name…. (p 239)
The Boston brethren were not slow to respond to this
request. Eight days after Churchwood's letter was
written the church issued the following certificate,
signed by Isaac Hull and John Farnum:
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"To all whom it may concern: These are to certify,
that our beloved brother William Screven is a
member in communion with us, and having had trial
of his gifts among us, and finding him to be a man
whom God hath qualified and furnished with the gifts
of his Holy Spirit and grace, enabling him to open
and apply the word of God, which through the
blessing of the Lord Jesus may be useful in his hand,
for the begetting and building up of souls in the
knowledge of God, do therefore appoint, approve,
and encourage him, to exercise his gift in the place
where he lives, or else-where, as the providence of
God may cast him; and so the Lord help him to eye
his glory in all things, and to walk humbly in the fear
of his name."
From Churchwood's letter it seems evident that a
body of baptized believers had already been
organized and had appointed Screven to the pastoral
office; but that they did not consider themselves
competent to administer the ordinances until their
minister elect should have received ordination at the
hands of a regularly constituted church, and until the
new organization should have been recognized by an
older. It is probable that most or all of those who
joined in the Kittery organization had been members
of Baptist churches in England. It is highly probable
that the pastor of the Kittery church is identical with
the William Scriven who, as a representative of the
Somerton church, was among the signers of the "
Confession of the Faith of several Churches of Christ
in the County of Somerset [England], and of some
Churches in the Counties near adjacent," set forth in
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1656. As he was born about 1629 he was twenty-five
years of age at the time. The fact that the settlement
effected by him in South Carolina was named
Somerton would go far toward establishing this
identification; but the supposition that it was his
father who signed the Confession would meet the
case equally well. It is almost certain that he was a
member of the Somerton church.
The date of his arrival in Maine is unknown, but it
must have been at some time previous to November
15, 1673, when his name appears in a deed at Kittery.
The following year he was married to a daughter of
Robert Cutts, a prosperous shipbuilder, one of whose
brothers was the first president of New Hampshire.
This would seem to have been Screven's second
marriage, as a son of his named William was a
member of the General Court in 1694. As early as
1675 we find him presented by the grand jury "for
not frequenting the public meeting according to law
on the Lord's days." It was shown, however, that he
attended another meeting of the established religion.
After serving in a number of other public offices, he
was appointed a deputy from Kittery in 1681. (pp
239-240)
[JFR]
Screven apparently did not go to Kittery as soon as
he could because Churchwood on the 25th of January,
wrote to the church in Boston that because of
Screven’s absence, the local magistrate was
threatening the church with fines and other penalties.
Shortly after this, Screven returned to Kittery, and it
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Church History Through the Trail of Blood
was not but a short time that he was summoned to the
court.
He was required to furnish a bond of one hundred
pounds, but he refused to give it resulting in his being
jailed. On April 12th, he was again in court at York.
This time he was fined another ten pounds and
“…forbidden to hold any further meetings in the
province and ordered to conform in religious matters
to ‘the laws here established in the Province, upon
such penalties as the law requires upon his neglect of
the premises.’” (p 241)
He was further ordered by the court to refrain from
pastoring the church and to leave the province. There
was no time set for his departure.
He requested that the Boston church send a
delegation to Kittery to organize the church. This
seemed to have been accomplished on September
25th, 1682.
It is believed that Screven and associates left for
South Carolina at the end of 1682 or the beginning of
1683. They formed a settlement on the Cooper River
which later would become the town of Charleston.
[Newman]
If the later date which the public records of the
province of Maine seem to fix for the departure of
Screven be accepted, he at once exchanged the
harassments of Maine for a delightful and most
promising field of labor. In any case, he soon found
himself surrounded by a considerable number of
sympathetic and highly influential souls, with
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freedom to exercise his ministry according to the
dictates of his conscience. About 1683 a colony of
north Britons came to Carolina under the patronage
of Lord Cardross. They are said to have been mostly
Baptists. They settled on Port Royal Island and
claimed independence of the Charleston Court.
Having failed to sustain this claim Lord Cardross
returned to England, and the population, being
exposed to the hostilities of Indians and Spaniards,
removed (before 1686) to the mouth of the Edisto
River. The Baptist part of the company became
members of Screven's church at Somerton. Thus
from many quarters, in the providence of God, a
considerable band of zealous Baptists, many of them
influentially connected, was gathered in the
neighborhood of Charleston. By 1693 a large
proportion of the members of the church had been
driven by the growing commercial im- portance of
Charleston to take up their residence there, and it was
thought wise to transfer their meeting to the town.
Until they built a house of worship they " held their
worship at the house of one William Chapman in
King Street." The lot on which the present building
stands was presented to the church in 1699 by
William Elliott. The Baptists were among the first to
occupy this region with organized Christian work.
(pp 245-246)
In 1700, just as the Baptists were entering their new
meetinghouse, they adopted the Confession of Faith
set forth in 1689 by "the ministers and messengers
of, and concerned for, upwards of one hundred
congregations in England and Wales (denying
Arminianism)," and, by reason of its subsequent
adoption (with slight modifications) by the
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Philadelphia Association, known in America as the
Philadelphia Confession.
There was at this time a dearth of gospel privileges
in Carolina outside of Charleston and its vicinity.
The colony had a population of about fifty-five
hundred, of whom three thousand were residents of
Charleston. Outside of Charleston there is said to
have been at that date no house of worship and no
school. The Baptists were easily foremost in
evangelical zeal. Screven, though advanced in age,
was abundant in labors, and the Charleston church
sent forth of its own numbers and procured from
other communities those who carried the gospel to
the neglected planters. The English Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts furnished
a number of missionaries from 1707 onward, but
they found that in most cases they had been preceded
by the Baptists (Humphrey, "Historical Account,"
pp. 88, 95, 108, etc.). (pp 246-247)
Aged, infirm, and possessed of a competency,
Screven laid down the duties of the pastorate in 1 706
and retired to his farm, where Georgetown now
stands. He left with the church as a memento and
guide "An Ornament for Church Members," which
was printed after his death. In conclusion he urged
the church to secure with as little delay as possible
"an able and faithful minister. Be sure you take care
that the person be orthodox in the faith, and of
blameless life, and does own the Confession of Faith
put forth by our brethren in London, in 1689." But
his evangelical zeal was too great to allow him to be
idle.
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We soon find him laboring earnestly in the regions
round about his home. The church secured the
services of Mr. White, an English Baptist minister,
who died after a brief term of service. Screven was
just considering an invitation to the pastorate of the
Boston church, but was constrained to resume his
work in Charleston. He died at his Georgetown
home, October 10, 1713, at the advanced age of
eighty-four. He left the church a strong body, with a
membership of nearly a hundred. A large number of
preaching-stations had been established, and the
negro population, already becoming relatively large,
had doubtless already been brought to a considerable
extent under the influence of the gospel. The
population of the province had increased to about
fifteen thousand, of whom rather more than half were
slaves. The fresh and fertile soil was yielding rich
returns to the application of slave labor, lumber was
abundant and marketable, the sea abounded in
valuable fish, and commercial prosperity gladdened
the hearts of the colonists. Culture and refinement
went hand in hand with abundance and leisure, and
the foundations were being laid for the brilliant
political and religious history of the succeeding time,
and also, alas! for more recent disasters. (pp 249-
250)
Virginia
[Newman]
The history of Virginia Baptists had barely a
beginning in the present period. Virginia was settled
by thorough- going churchmen. The Church of
England was established, the support of its ministers
amply provided for at the public expense; the people
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were compelled under severe penalties to participate
regularly in the church services and to subject
themselves to catechetical instruction; dissenting
services of any kind were rigorously prohibited;
heavy fines were imposed on ship-owners for
bringing in dissenters, and the people were
prohibited under heavy penalties from harboring or
in any way favoring them. (p 251)
From the early years of the eighteenth century there
were a number of scattered Baptists in Virginia,
especially in Isle of Wight County. Some of these
sent an earnest petition to the General Baptists of
London for ministerial help. In response two
ministers, Robert Nordin and Thomas White, were
sent out in 1714. The latter died before reaching
Virginia; the former organized a church at Burleigh.'
It is possible that this and other General Baptist
churches had already been gathered before the arrival
of Nordin. Before 1729 there was also a church in
Surrey County, in close affiliation, it would seem,
with that at Burleigh. Nordin died in 1735. Two years
later two more English Baptist ministers, Casper
Mintz and Richard Jones, came out to carry forward
the work. The church at Burleigh was in a distracted
and unsettled state in 1756 and appealed to the
Philadelphia Association for a visit of brethren to set
things in order. (p 252)
[JFR]
Newman records that there was much strife because
of the local officials in Virginia. Because of this strife
and persecution, it may have largely affected the
beginnings of Baptist churches in North Carolina.
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North Carolina
If Baptists appeared in Virginia during the latter part
of the seventeenth century, as Morgan Edwards
supposed, they were probably driven by the severe
measures referred to across the North Carolina
border. We have no record of the formation of a
church in North Carolina until 1727, when an
organization was effected under the leadership of
Paul Palmer, who had been a member of the Welsh
Tract church, and who was a correspondent of John
Comer, of Newport. From a letter written by this
church to Comer in 1729, we learn that it was
organized in 1727 and consisted of thirty-two
members. It was located in Chowan County, at a
place called Perquimans. This was the only church
organized during the present period. (pp 252-253)
Connecticut
[Newman]
Four churches were organized in Connecticut during
this period, under the influence of the Rhode Island
General (Six Principle) Baptists—the first, at Groton
in 1705, through the efforts of Valentine Wightman,
of North Kingston, R. I., who became its pastor; the
second, at New London in 1726, in connection with
the labors of Stephen Gorton; the third, in 1735, at
Wallingford, of persons who had been members of
the New London church; the fourth church to be
constituted, and the last during this period, was the
Farmington (now Southington) church. Small bands
of Baptists of the same type appeared in a number of
other places. (p 253)
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Church History Through the Trail of Blood
New York
[Newman]
In 1643 Lady Moody, who had adopted
antipedobaptist views, left Massachusetts, with a
number of her friends and dependents, for Long
Island. On her way she spent some time in New
Haven, where she is said to have made several
converts to her views, among them Mrs. Eaton, the
wife of the first governor of the New Haven colony,
and the daughter of an English bishop. Mrs. Eaton
gave much trouble to Pastor John Davenport, who
labored earnestly to convince her that "baptism has
come in the place of circumcision, and is to be
administered unto infants."
Lady Moody took a patent of land from Governor
Kieft at Gravesend, with the guaranty of "the free
liberty of conscience according to the custom of
Holland, without molestation or disturbance from
any magistrate or magistrates, or any other
ecclesiastical minister that may pretend jurisdiction
over them." A number of other antipedobaptists from
New England and elsewhere gathered themselves
around Lady Moody, but they do not seem at this
time to have formed themselves into a church.
Francis Doughty, an English antipedobaptist, having
incurred persecution at Lynn and Taunton, Mass., for
denying infant baptism, was the first religious
teacher in Flushing. After laboring for a short period
he left for Virginia in 1656. A paper on " The State
of Religion " in the New Netherlands, drawn up by
two Reformed clergymen … in August, 1657, and
addressed to the classis of Amsterdam, gives a
number of interesting facts with reference to Long
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Church History Through the Trail of Blood
Island at this time, which partly confirm and partly
contradict some of the data derived from other
sources. Mennonites are mentioned as being at
Gravesend, who " reject infant baptism, the Sabbath,
the office of preacher and the teachers of God's word,
saying that through these have come all sorts of
contention into the world. Whenever they come
together the one or the other reads something for
them." These so-called Mennonites were probably
identical with Lady Moody and her followers, and
these peculiarities may account for the failure of
these antipedobaptists to organize a regular Baptist
church. The notice about Flushing is highly
interesting: "At Flushing they have had a
Presbyterian preacher who conformed to our Church,
but many of them became endowed with divers
opinions. . . . They absented themselves from
preaching, nor would they pay the preacher his
promised stipend. The said preacher was obliged to
leave and repair to the English Virginias." This
preacher can scarcely be other than Francis Doughty,
whose antipedobaptist views seem abundantly
attested. The document continues: "Last year [1656]
a fomenter of evil came there. He was a cobbler from
Rhode Island . . . and stated that he was
commissioned by Christ. He began to preach at
Flushing, and then went with the people into the river
and dipped them. This becoming known here, the
constable proceeded thither and brought him along.
He was banished the province." According to the
con- temporary public records this "cobbler" was
none other than the distinguished William
Wickenden, pastor of the Providence church. In
November, 1656, William Hallett, sheriff of
Flushing, was arraigned before the authorities for
having "dared to collect conventicles in his house,
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and to permit one William Wickendam [Wickenden]
to explain and comment on God's Holy Word, and to
administer sacraments, though not called thereto by
any civil or clerical authority"; also for having
assisted at such meetings, and "accepted from the
said Wickendam's hands the bread in the form and
manner the Lord's Supper is usually celebrated."
Hallett was deprived of his office and fined fifty
pounds. Wickenden was fined one hundred pounds
and banished. He was sentenced to "remain a
prisoner till the fine and cost of the process shall be
paid." When it was ascertained that he was too poor
to pay the fine he was allowed to depart, with the
threat of imprisonment till fine and costs should be
paid in case he should return. A still more stringent
ordinance was enacted in 1662, providing for a fine
of fifty guldens for being present at an unauthorized
religious meeting, with a doubling of the fine for the
second offense, a quadrupling for the third, "and
arbitrary punishment besides." The stringency of the
law would seem to indicate that the evils forefended
were becoming alarming. About 1711 Nicholas
Eyres, a well-educated brewer of New York, invited
Valentine Wightman, of Groton, Conn., one of the
most noted General Baptist ministers of the time, to
New York, and opened his house on Broad Street for
religious services. Wightman seems for years to have
visited the city from time to time. In 1714 Eyres and
a number of others were baptized by Wightman. It
was the advice of some that the baptismal service
should be private for fear of the mob; but Eyres
insisted that it should be public, referring to the New
Testament words: "No man doeth anything in secret,
and he himself seeketh to be known openly." He
waited on Governor Burnet (son of the famous
bishop) and asked for police protection. This was
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cheerfully granted. The governor graced the occasion
with his presence and is said to have remarked after
the baptismal service was over "This was the ancient
manner of baptizing, and is, in my opinion, much
preferable to the practice of modern times." In 1715
Eyres's
house was
licensed as a Baptist
meetinghouse. In 1720 he hired a separate meeting
house and in 1721 received a permit to preach, under
the Toleration Act, from Governor Burnet, which
begins:
"Whereas, Mr. Nich. Eyres, brewer, a freeman, and
inhabitant of the City of New York, pretending to be
at present a teacher or preacher of a congregation of
Anabaptists, which has had its beginning about five
years ago within this city and has so continued
hitherto." The recognition of the church and the
ordination of the pastor seem not to have taken place
till 1724, when Valentine Wightman, of Groton, and
Daniel Wightman, of Newport, visited New York for
these purposes. In 1728 a lot was purchased and a
meetinghouse erected. Considerable aid was
received from the Rhode Island Baptists, but a
crushing debt was incurred. This, combined with
doctrinal disharmony, almost wrecked the church in
1730. According to Eyres, who left New York in
1731 to become joint pastor with Wightman of the
Six Principle church of Newport, "some of them
deserted under a pretense of love to the principles of
absolute election and predestination." The church
languished and became extinct before the close of the
period. About sixteen Baptist families settled on
Block Island in 1663 and without formal
organization maintained religious services until
1772, when a Baptist church was organized, the only
church that has ever existed on the island.
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About 1700 William Rhodes, a Baptist minister,
appeared at Oyster Bay, Long Island, and a number
were converted through his ministry and probably
baptized by him. Sometime afterward (the date does
not appear to be ascertainable) a church was
organized with the aid of elders from Rhode Island
(probably General Baptists), and in 1724 Robert
Peeks, a member of the church, was ordained as its
pastor. (pp 254-257)
Conclusion
With the record of the New York churches, Newman
concludes the early history of the Baptists from
1639-1740. We will conclude this part since we only
wanted to consider the churches that were started at
the beginning of the United States. Of necessity, I
have only highlighted the more prominent events of
this period. Newman’s work on this subject is vast
and so much that it would not be possible to look at
all of his work on the History of Baptists in the
United States.
End of Part 2
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