|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina
ASHEBORO. Sandy Creek Baptist Church, often described as the mother of Southern Baptist churches, was founded in 1755 by Shubal Stearns about fifteen miles northeast of Asheboro. Stearns' grave is two miles south of the church.
CHEROKEE. At the intersection of
U. S. 19 and U. S. 441 is a stone church built in the 1920s for the Cherokee
Indians. This was built with funds from the Home Mission Board of the Southern
Baptist Convention and for several years was pastored by home missionaries.
HAYESVILLE. Birthplace of George W. Truett (1867-1944), pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, 1897-1944. He was president of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist World Alliance.
RALEIGH. Still located on the original campus, Shaw University was an original project of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Shaw was founded in 1865 and became the first Baptist institution to pioneer African-American medical and pharmaceutical education. Leonard Hall and several other historic Victorian structures attest to the rich tradition of the school. The entire campus was a thriving antebellum estate before Henry M. Tupper of Massachusetts gave his own savings to call the first classes to order in 1866.
SHILOH. The first Baptist church in the state was organized by Paul Palmer, "the father of General Baptists in North Carolina," in 1727. Though this church did not survive, Palmer's second church, Shiloh, was constituted in 1720 and is still active.
WAKE FOREST. Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, established in 1951, is located on the former campus of Wake Forest University.
WAKE FOREST. North Main Street is the site of the beginning of Wake Forest University in 1835. The University was begun in the home of Dr. Calvin Jones, a founder of the North Carolina Medical Society.
WINSTON-SALEM. Between 1951 and 1956,
starting with the chapel, twenty-four buildings were erected on the Reynolda
Campus of Wake Forest University. The library contains an impressive collection
of North Carolina Baptist materials.
KIEF. The first Russian Baptist church in America was founded here in 1901. The Russian language is still used in hymns and readings on special occasions.
TOWER CITY. This central city was a proposed site for a Baptist college for training ministers. The short-lived effort closed in 1886, and a permanent campus never materialized.
WALHALLA. Here in the Catholic cemetery
is a monument to the massacre of three missionaries, Catholic, Presbyterian,
and Baptist, by Indians in 1852. Elijah Stites Terry was the first known Baptist
missionary in the region, long before the Dakota Territory was settled after
the Civil War.
CINCINNATI. "Sunnyside" was the home of lumberman and inventor William Howard Doane. Most Baptist will remember him for the composition of hundreds of hymn tunes and gospel songs which he wrote in collaboration with his blind cousin, Fanny J. Crosby. The house is modeled after an Italian villa with a prominent tower and solarium.
CINCINNATI. The first church of any denomination in Ohio was Columbia (Duck Creek) Baptist Church, established in the Northwest Territory in 1790. Stephen Gano, pastor of First Baptist, New York City, helped to organize the church with nine others. The first pastor was John Smith, later a United States senator. The site of the Columbia Baptist meetinghouse and the cemetery are commemorated in an impressive monument on a grassy knoll near the Ohio River.
GRANVILLE. A sprawling campus and college town now occupy the acreage once known as the "College Farm" and original home of Granville Literary and Theological Institute, now Denison University, founded in 1832. New England missionaries Jonathan Going and John Stevens chose the city, and Ohio Baptists helped to raise support for the effort. All that is left of the original campus is Middleton House, a university guest residence. Also of interest is the Lower Campus, formerly Shepardson College, the women's division. In the college cemetery is the grave of Jonathan Going, a cofounder of the American Baptist Home Mission Society.
HAMILTON. Westside Baptist Church, the first Southern Baptist church in Ohio, was formed in 1929.
RIO GRANDE. A revival meeting at
Raccoon Baptist Church in 1850 held by Freewill Baptist minister Ira Haning
led to the conversion of Nehemiah Atwood and, eventually in 1876, the founding
of a Baptist college at Rio Grande. Original buildings of Rio Grande College
burned prior to 1940. The college now offers a four-year program on an attractive
campus which once served as the wealthy Atwood estate.
ANADARKO. Rock Springs Baptist Church, the first Baptist church among the Oklahoma Plains Indians, was organized in 1874 by John McIntosh, a Creek Indian and first-known missionary to these tribes. McIntosh's grave is nearby.
ANADARKO. Founded in 1904, the Anadarko Christian Center has long served the Native American community of western Oklahoma with social and evangelistic programs. The Baptist mission is ideally situated only blocks from the American Indian Hall of Fame.
ATOKA. A few miles southwest of Atoka at Boggy Depot, First Baptist Church was organized in 1869 by a missionary to the Indians, Joseph Samuel Murrow, a native of Georgia. It is the oldest Baptist church in Oklahoma with continuous service.
ATOKA. The grave of Joseph S. Murrow (1835-1929), longtime Baptist and missionary among Seminole and Choctaw Indians, is located here. Murrow helped found the Indian Territory Convention, the Atoka Baptist Academy, Bacone College, and the only Christian orphanage in existence primarily for Indians.
EUFAULA. H. F. Buckner (1818-1882), longtime Baptist missionary among the Creek Indians, is buried in Eufaula. Buckner began work with the American Indian Missions Association which later merged with the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.
EUFAULA. On the grounds of Tuskegee Baptist Church is a rock from which Annie Armstrong is said to have mounted her horse to begin her long journey visiting mission points and organizing women's societies.
EUFAULA. Henry Frieland Buckner, a missionary to the "hostile" Creek Nation, established a mission in Eufaula. He produced a Creek language grammar, hymnal, and New Testament published by the Board of Domestic and Indian Missions under whose appointment he served. He is buried in the Buckner family plot in Greenwood Cemetery.
MUSKOGEE. Chartered in 1880 as Indian University, Bacone College is the oldest in the state. Almon C. Bacone founded the school as the only Indian college in the United States, and it remains so. The Creek Tribal Council donated 160 acres to the campus, and Rockefeller Hall was built on the original Tahlequah plot in 1885. The program was originally directed by the American Baptist Home Mission Society, and American Baptists continue in this tradition. The founder's grave, Bacone Chapel, and the Indian Museum are notable spots on campus.
MUSKOGEE. On the Arkansas River north of Muskogee, Baptist Indian missionary Isaac McCoy established the first Baptist church in Indian Territory at Ebenezer Station in 1832. The exact location of the church cannot be determined.
OKLAHOMA CITY. A Baptist mission center, providing day care services for meat-packing plant workers in a Hispanic neighborhood, was started in 1917 by the Woman's Missionary Union of First Baptist Church here. In 1971 management of the center was assumed by the local association with help from the state convention and the Home Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention. It now serves not only that area, but all of Oklahoma City.
SADDLE MOUNTAIN. In 1893 a young
Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society missionary named Isabel Crawford
arrived to begin work with the Blanket or Kiowa Indians. She was invited to
the largest camp at Saddle Mountain, and there suffered hardships to constitute
a Baptist church in 1897. Crawford raised many eyebrows when, as a woman, she
celebrated the Lord's Supper for the Kiowas in 1901. Many of the area place
names commemorate these events.
HILLSBORO. At this location on May 11, 1845, West Union Baptist Church, the first Baptist church west of the Rockies, celebrated its first communion and baptism. In February 1844 in the David Lenox home, the church had organized and written its own historic covenant, all without a pastor. The property is now a national historic landmark in which Oregon Baptists hold historic services periodically.
KLAMATH FALLS. First Baptist Church, the oldest Southern Baptist church west of the Rocky Mountains, was formed in 1884. J. B. Griffith of Georgia served as pastor until 1910 .
McMINNVILLE. Linfield College was founded in 1855, and that same year it merged with the Oregon City College, which was founded by the Oregon Baptist Education Society in 1849. A gift of real estate from George Fisher Linfield led to a change of name in 1922. A Baptist collection has been developed for Oregon Baptists in Northrup Library.
OREGON CITY. Although the West Union Church in Hillsboro was the first to be constituted, the Oregon City congregation erected the first Baptist meetinghouse west of the Rockies in late 1848. The simple frame structure has given way to a more modern building in which the congregation now worships.
PORTLAND. In 1874 the American Baptist Home Mission Society opened Chinese mission work in First Baptist Church which prevailed over the contemporary voices of ethnocentrism. Rev. Dong Gong, missionary for the Society, was an outspoken critic of the enslavement of women in the Portland Chinese community and frequently risked his life in the conduct of his ministry. The effectiveness of his ministry was measured when a separate Chinese chapel was erected in 1879 in Portland.
PORTLAND. The first independent deaf church in the Southern Baptist Convention was organized here in 1975.
PORTLAND. A dream of W. B. Hinson
(pastor of First Baptist Church, Portland) and John Marvin Dean (founder of
Chicago's Northern Baptist Seminary), Western Baptist Theological Seminary opened
in 1927 in the Hinson Memorial Baptist Church. The original campus was replaced
by a newer property in 1945.
BRISTOL. Irishman Thomas Dungan established Cold Spring Baptist Church, the first Baptist congregation in the Middle Colonies, in 1684. The church existed until 1702 when Dungan removed to Rhode Island. An old cemetery, which probably belonged to the church, contains the grave of Benjamin Rush, Sr., father of the famed surgeon.
BRYN MAWR. The recently reconstructed estate named Harriton was the house of Charles Thomson, first secretary of the Continental Congress and designer of the Great Seal of the United States. Thomson received the first ministerial scholarship to attend Isaac Eaton's Hopewell Academy and spent his retirement years translating the Scriptures and writing religious treatises. A large monument in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia marks his remains. Harriton was also the home of Horatio Gates Jones, prominent lawyer, politician, and Baptist historian of the late-nineteenth century.
BRYN MAWR. Ellen Cushing Junior College was founded in Philadelphia in 1925 as the Baptist Institute for Christian Workers. In 1952 it relocated to a beautiful baronial estate where it functioned as a women's junior college until 1978.
BRYN MAWR. The original stone meetinghouse of Lower Merion Baptist Church was built in 1808 on a plot of land donated by Charles Thomson. The Baptist burial ground adjacent to the building is the resting place of numerous Baptist worthies.
CHESTER. John P. Crozer, a wealthy mercantilist and landowner in the Upland area, provided the funds in 1864 for a theological seminary to educate Baptist ministers for the Philadelphia area. In 1970 Crozer Seminary moved to Rochester, New York, and the Chester campus became the property of the Medical Center. Commencement Hall, Bucknell Library, and the Victorian faculty residences still stand.
EPHRATA. Now called Fleischman Memorial Baptist Church, the first German Baptist church congregation is distinguished as the mother church of the German Baptist movement in America. It was founded by German native Konrad A. Fleishman in 1843.
EPHRATA. The Ephrata Cloisters of the German Seventh Day Baptists are in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. This was a semi-monastic group closely affiliated with but never a part of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference. It was founded by Conrad Beissel in 1728, and an attractive, enclosed village known for its industry and simple lifestyle was erected in 1732. Members of this group were noted for their Pietistic practices and played an important role in the treatment of wounded soldiers from the Battle of Brandywine during the Revolutionary War. They were master printers and printed Martyr's Mirror, but had to give up much of their paper stock for wadding for muskets. It is now owned by the State of Pennsylvania and maintains a library and museum, and conducts tours of the Sister-house, the Almary, and Saal or meeting place.
FACTORYVILLE. Keystone Academy, once a Baptist-related school, was founded in 1868 in the First Baptist Church building. Unexpected growth led to relocation of the program to the La Plume area north of Scranton where the academy became Scranton-Keystone Junior College in 1934. Church affiliation was discontinued at that time.
LIBRARY. Constituted in 1773, Peter's Creek Baptist Church was one of the earliest Protestant congregations in the Monongahela Valley.
PHILADELPHIA. The Baptist Board of Foreign Missions (Triennial Convention) was organized at First Baptist Church in 1814, in the church's second location at LaGrange Place and Second Street.
PHILADELPHIA. Grace Baptist Church, organized in 1872, reached national attention during the ministry of Russell H. Conwell from 1882 to 1925. The Baptist Temple, completed in 1891, is a principal landmark of the Baptist institutional church movement in America. Conwell is buried in Founder's Garden, immediately behind the Temple.
PHILADELPHIA. Russell Conwell created Temple College (now a university) in his home in 1884, where he trained young men for the ministry. On the campus are Thomas Hall, Conwell Hall, and Paley Library, which houses Philadelphia Urban Archives and a reconstruction of Conwell's office. Park Mall is a restored brownhouse rowhouse area where early classes were held.
PHILADELPHIA. Pennepek (Lower Dublin) Baptist Church, located in northeastern Philadelphia, was the second Baptist church started in Pennsylvania. It was organized in 1688.
VALLEY FORGE. The American Baptist Headquarters, international center for the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., was dedicated in 1963. The "Statement in Stone" houses International Ministries, National Ministries, Educational Ministries, and other agencies.
WOLFDALE. Thomas and Alexander Campbell, father-and-son organizers of the first Christian Baptist Church in 1812, once preached at Brush Run Church, a log church in this remote hill country near Washington, Pennsylvania. From this isolated area, the Disciples of Christ eventually emerged.
RIO PIEDRAS. Grace Conaway Institute, started by Baptists in Coamo, was the nucleus of the multi-denominational Evangelical Theological Seminary of Puerto Rico chartered in 1919.
RIO PIEDRAS. Although Primera Iglesia
Bautista (First Baptist Church) was organized in Old San Juan, Rev. Hugh McCormick,
the first missionary, created the principal work at Rio Piedras in 1899. The
original building was once a government structure and is now the home of an
aggressive church program. Calvary Baptist Church of New York City gave a large
donation to erect the first Baptist building here for all of Puerto Rico.
NEWPORT. Here the first known Indian Baptist, a Connecticut man named Japheth, was baptized in 1674.
NEWPORT. The Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House, built in 1730, is one of the holdings of the Newport Historical Society. The Newport Seventh Day Baptist Church began in 1671 as a split from the First Baptist Church. The church has the old wineglass raised pulpit and is a symbol or shrine for religious toleration in the city of Newport, where freedom of worship attracted Particular-Regular Baptists, Quakers, Episcopal, Methodist, Congregationalists, Six Principle Baptists, and the first Seventh Day Baptist Church in America. It holds a fine collection of Sabbatarian records and other historical materials.
NEWPORT. United Baptist Clarke Memorial Church is the successor of the original church founded by John Clarke. It is regarded as the second Baptist church in America. A slave named "Jack, a colored man," perhaps the first African-American Baptist, was baptized in this church.
PROVIDENCE. Roger Williams National Memorial Park celebrates the Baptist preacher who formed the colony where "no man should be molested for his conscience."
PROVIDENCE. The first Baptist church in America was established in 1639 by Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island Colony. The present structure was built in 1775.
PROVIDENCE. The property and building of Condgon Street Baptist Church were donated to the First African Baptist Church by the John Brown family when African-Americans were no longer permitted to sit in the balcony at First Baptist due to the construction of an organ.
PROVIDENCE. The graves of James Manning and Francis Wayland are located in the North Burial Ground.
PROVIDENCE. Founded in 1764 as Rhode
Island College, Brown University was the first Baptist institution of higher
learning in the United States. The university was first located at Warren, Rhode
Island, but it was moved to Providence in 1770. James Manning, active in the
struggle for religious liberty in America, served as the first president. Other
prominent Baptists promoted and administered its programs, including Morgan
Edwards, W. H. P. Faunce, and Clarence Barbour. The John Hay Library, one of
the finest collections of Americana, includes the university archives and Roger
Williams' Bible and letters.
AIKEN. Silver Bluff Church, located in Aiken County, was organized in 1773, the best-known African-American church in South Carolina during slavery times. Jesse Galphin, the African-American pastor of the church, was also a slave.
BEAUFORT. The First Baptist Church of Beaufort was organized from Euhaw Church in 1804. The present building, completed in 1850, was used as a hospital by Union troops during the Civil War. Richard Fuller was pastor of this church from 1832 to 1847.
BEAUFORT. The Mather School was once a thriving academy in downtown Beaufort, adjacent to the sea. It was constructed from discarded lumber used for Army barracks on nearby Hilton Head Island. Still standing are Staughton, Judd, and Kinsman halls.
CHARLESTON. Charleston's First Baptist Church was the first Baptist church in the south. It was organized in Maine by William Screven in 1682 and moved to South Carolina about 1696. The first meetinghouse was built by 1699. The present sanctuary was designed by Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument, and built in 1822. This was the boyhood church of James P. Boyce; Basil Manly, Jr.; and Henry Allen Tupper, second Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board. The grave of Richard Furman is in the churchyard. Plaques in the lobby honor William Screven and Oliver Hart.
COLUMBIA . The South Carolina Baptist Convention, the first state convention in the south and second in the country, was organized at First Baptist Church on December 3, 1821, by nine men representing three associations. The organization plan was largely conceived by Richard Furman. The First Baptist Church was organized in1809 under the leadership of William Bullein Johnson, future first president of Southern Baptist Convention. The building where the convention was formed no longer exists, but it was located near the 1857 auditorium, which was used for the first session of the Secession Convention of 1860 and is a national historic site.
COLUMBIA. One of America's truly distinguished colleges, Benedict Institute was founded in 1870 by Bathsheba Benedict of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, under the auspices of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. The school once occupied a stately columnar mansion which was razed after 1900. The program now includes Mather School, a former post-Civil War academy.
COLUMBIA. The South Carolina Baptist Convention building is located in Columbia, having opened in September 1994, and serves about two thousand churches. Former building sites are at Richland Street, where it was known as Baptist Building (1962-1994), and at Hampton Street, where it was known as Baptist House (1938-1962).
COLUMBIA. The Baptist Hospital opened September 1, 1914, when South Carolina Baptists purchased the Knowlton Hospital in Columbia. In 1916, the hospital moved to its current location. In 1943 the Peak Hospital in Six Mile joined the South Carolina Baptist Hospital with no debt or restrictions, but after five years of operation it was converted to a home for aged and chronically ill people. In 1956 the hospital built a 50-bed hospital in Easley after citizens there purchased six acres of land and gave $300,000 for the project. In 1993 increasing changes in the national healthcare industry led to a cooperative agreement that separated the South Carolina Baptist Hospital from the South Carolina Baptist Convention. A climate of shared ministry remains between the two organizations.
EDGEFIELD. Basil Manly, Sr., was the first pastor of Edgefield Church and helped to organize it in 1823. William Bullein Johnson was pastor at here at the time of his resignation as president of the Triennial Convention and his election to the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention. His pulpit is located in the chapel.
EDISTO ISLAND. Hephzibah Jenkins Townsend organized the women from neighboring islands into the Wadmalaw and Edisto Female Mite Society, the first woman's missionary society in the south. They baked bread, sold it, and contributed money to Luther Rice for foreign missions, to the Charleston Association for work with the Catawba Indians, and to First Baptist Church to help construct its first building. Townsend was so loved by the slaves that they buried her among them in the church cemetery. The tabby ruins of Mrs. Townsend's ovens can still be seen.
GEORGETOWN. The grave of William Screven (1629-1713), pastor of the First Baptist Church, Charleston, is located near the intersection of Prince and Screven streets.
GREENVILLE. The first Baptists in Greenville who built the First Baptist Church were brought together by William Bullein Johnson, who began preaching in the court house while he was the teacher in the old female academy. The original meetinghouse was re-erected in 1826, but the church was not constituted until 1831, after Johnson had left Edgefield. The second auditorium, located on West McBee between Laurens and Richardson streets, was built in 1858 with funds raised by James P. Boyce, who was building fund chairman. The church moved to the Cleveland Street site in 1974.
GREENVILLE. Furman Academy began in 1827 at Edgefield and was named in honor of Richard Furman because of his belief in ministerial education. The campus experienced several moves before coming to Greenville in 1851. Little remains of the campus occupied by Furman from 1851 to 1958, though the belltower at the new campus is a reminder of the school's tradition here. In May 1992, after a brief dispute over the election of trustees, the state convention voted to sever ties with Furman University. The Baptist Historical Collection, housed in the Furman University Library, serves as archives for the South Carolina Baptist Convention.
GREENVILLE. The Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention was established in May 1863, and Elford Press published some of the earliest releases of the board. Working out of their homes, Basil Manly, Jr., and John A. Broadus were the editors. Broadman Press of the Sunday School Board was named for these two men. After the Civil War, the board was moved from Greenville to Nashville. The Kind Word Series, one of its early publications, was published until 1970.
GREENVILLE. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was founded in Greenville. The classroom building, used from 1859 to 1877, was the first meetinghouse of First Baptist Church. The dormitory, used from 1866 to 1877, had previously been used for a hotel, a Confederate hospital, and a garrison for Federal troops after the Civil War.
GREENVILLE. The Baptist State Convention purchased Greenville Woman's College in 1854. It occupied the site of the male and female academies begun in 1819 by the citizens of Greenville. In the 1930s, Greenville Woman's College became a part of Furman University. The men's and women's campuses were finally located on one campus when Furman moved to its present site in 1958-1961.
SILVERSTREET. The grave of Luther Rice (1783-1836) is located at the Pine Pleasant Church. Rice was one of the first American Baptist foreign missionaries. He returned to America to raise funds to support Baptist missions and was instrumental in establishing organized Baptist life in America.
SOCIETY HILL. Welsh Neck Church is the second oldest surviving Baptist church in South Carolina, having been established in January 1738 by a group of Welsh from the Delaware tract of Pennsylvania. The establishment of the first statewide Central Committee of Woman's Missionary Union occurred here on January 10, 1875, with other states soon following. The present Welsh Neck Church building includes an outdoor baptistry with dressing rooms. The parsonage was built in 1856.
STATEBURG. In 1799 John Mitchell Roberts became pastor of High Hills Baptist Church and sometime before November 1, 1800, opened an academy near the church for the education of young preachers. These preachers received financial aid from the Charleston Association. Oliver Hart had been responsible for this fund, hoping to educate South Carolina preachers for service in the south. In addition, the Charleston Association purchased a library for the academy, which was transferred to Furman Academy in Edgefield in 1827. Roberts Academy closed in 1810 and is considered the educational link between the Charleston Association's fund for the education of ministers and Furman Academy.
STATEBURG. High Hills of the Santee Church was constituted by seventy families in 1772, although they had erected a meetinghouse in 1770. There was no consistent preacher until young Richard Furman was ordained in 1774 and called to preach regularly. The present church building is on a lot purchased from General Thomas Sumter in 1803. John Mitchell Roberts is buried in its cemetery.
UNION. The site of the old meetinghouse
in Union County is on a tract at the fork between Fairforest Creek and the Tyger
River. The Fairforest Church, led by Philip Mulkey, was one of the earliest
and most influential of the Separate Baptist churches, dating from 1759. It
was a Separate Baptist pastor who led Richard Furman to Christ.