Noah Calton Baldwin was the grand old man among the Baptists of Southwest Virginia. For nearly 60 years, he was a central figure in the religious life of the frontier from Marion to Abingdon. He was the father of the Lebanon Baptist Association. He founded churches and served as pastor of about a dozen, yet he admitted that his favorite was Friendship, near Lodi (which is near Glade Spring) in Washington County. It was the church closest to his home, a place he whimsically called Whang Doodle Hollow.
Baldwin was a crusty soul. He knew ups and downs. He forsook Methodists over their mode of baptism. He battled with fierce anti-missionary Baptists. He lost a church to the anti crowd. He was maligned by opponents and unfairly called “a money hunter and divider of churches” because he was for missions. He and his beloved Lebanon Association even fell out with one another at times. He was an independent thinker and sometimes ran contrary to the prevailing thought among most of the Virginia Baptists. But they all knew that Noah Baldwin was solid and unmovable.
He was the stuff of legends. At Friendship, he sometimes preached lying down, probably due to gout. He liked to rap his cane on the pulpit platform for emphasis and likely to awaken anyone who was nodding off. He entered politics and became the first mayor of Glade Spring. As an old man, he married a fourth time and thereby acquired three young step-daughters.
Baldwin
When the beginnings of a new year dawned in 1898, he was 80 years of age. His joints were aching. His spirits were waning. He was preoccupied with advancing age.
“Through the forbearance and tender mercy of God, I am again permitted to see and enjoy the beginning of another year of life's journey. More sorrow than joy has been my lot all through my Christian life. And as the years pass by, they only bring accumulated sorrows.
“My mind has been much exercised of late on the shortness of time and the swiftness which it leaves us from the cradle to the grave. When I was a little boy, playing with my brothers around my father's hearth stones, from one year to another appeared to be a long time. But now I am 80 years old, and to look back to the days of my boyhood appears as but yesterday.
“Am well as one of my age could expect to be with the exception of a tumor on my left hand which has and still continues to give me a good deal of pain, particularly of a night. But I am thankful to be able to say [that] my mind is calm and hopeful. Trust that all things may work for my present and eternal good.”
In those final years, the old man endured yet more struggles. His wife's brother was murdered. One of his “fast friends,” a fellow and younger preacher, died and the loss lay heavy upon the old man. A new pastor came to Friendship and the two ministers were “not on good brotherly terms.” The new pastor was the one to offer an olive branch; and in time, Baldwin returned to worship services and occasionally filled the pulpit. The old home place burned and Baldwin and his family had to depend upon the charity of friends. And there was the pain of cancer. For Baldwin, it was always about beginnings, endings and new beginnings.
In the winter of '99, Baldwin was sick. He confided to his diary: “During my illness have been more deeply impressed with a sense of the awful solemnities of death, and my nearness to its realities than ever before. Feel quite sure that I am hastening to the end of my earthly career. But the greatest of all questions with me is, am I prepared to meet it? My answer to this is as follows. For over 60 years I have had a hope that through the merits and intercession of Christ, the God-man, I am saved. But often sin and some doubts and fears have caused me to greatly fear that, after all I may be deceived and find my mistake when it is too late to correct it. Lord help me to decide, safely, the doubtful case for Christ's sake.”
He began to think of endings. “But when I die, be it soon or late, the following is my earnest wish and desire. Bury me in the Anderson cemetery in Smyth Co., Va., at the right side of my beloved Lavinia, standing at the head of the grave. It is further my wish and desire that … the placing of such marble at the head of my grave, as friends may consider my poor sinful remains worthy of.” He named those whom he wanted to officiate at the burial and at the funeral which could be held “at some future time, at such place as my friends may desire.”
Noah Baldwin lived to see the new century begin. On January 6, 1901, he wrote: “This is the first Sunday in the Twentieth century. Oh how time flies! An inch or two of time is all that man can boast. In all his flower and prime, he is but vanity and dust. Like grass, he cometh forth in the morning, in the evening he is cut down. What changes have taken place in the world during the last century! What may occur during the next is impossible to conjecture much less to foretell.
“Wars and rumors of wars have been distinguishing elements during the last, and from present appearances may be of the present. Great warships and the manufacture of the most powerful and deadly instruments of warfare would seem to indicate it. What a vast pile of plow-shears and pruning hooks the present amount of warfare implements would make if they could all be gathered up and manufactured into those useful implements! And this is what the Inspired Book teaches will be done before the end of time.
“Science, during the last century, has brought to light, and placed in our hands and for our use many very valuable discoveries—as steam, electricity, etc. Old methods are thrown aside and new and better methods adopted. But after all, it is questionable whether all these things have added any real benefit to the world. The old gospel is the same, the way of salvation the same …”
The ending came for Baldwin in January 1903. True to his wishes, he was buried at Adwolfe in the Anderson family cemetery. In the summer, a funeral service was held at Friendship, which was “crowded to its utmost capacity.” Lebanon Association erected a marble shaft at the grave and time took its toll on the stone. In 1985 a Baptist layman, Mack Sturgill, led the movement to restore the monument.