Heritage Column for Jan. 20, 2005
Last week this column told about the farewell address of Andrew Broaddus, a Baptist statesman of the early 19th century. In his message delivered before the Dover Baptist Association in 1833 and repeated in 1845, he employed a rhetorical device of calling out the names of the departed. Just the surnames were sufficient for the generations in his audiences. They were recognizable.
Last week I offered a challenge by asking those who recognized most or all of the names to let me know. I guessed that a dozen persons might make a 100 percent score. I am still waiting for the results!
I also promised to give thumbnail sketches from the roll call. Broaddus mentioned eight men by name from the pioneering generation of Virginia Baptists, the generation which struggled to secure religious liberty. He admitted that “others might be named”; but he offered only eight.
His roll call included Ford, Webber, Courtney, Lunsford, Toler, Noel, Lewis and Greenwood. Let us consider the lives of these patriarchs.
Reuben Ford was a Goochland farmer by trade who led in the formation of the Goochland Baptist Church in 1771 and served as its pastor, as well as of others in the area. He was among those who dreamed of a Baptist “seminary of learning” in Virginia but never lived to see the dream fulfilled. His greatest claim to remembrance may be in his role as an advocate for religious liberty. As clerk of the earliest state Baptist organizations-the General Committee and the Committee of Correspondence-and as a literate man, he penned the eloquent memorials which stated the Baptist position for free churches in a free state. Ford's memorial is the beautiful and effective Goochland Church and an impressive monument to him is in the churchyard.
William Webber was a young minister who followed the evangelist John Waller and landed himself in the Urbanna jail “for Teaching and Preaching the Gospel.” He also was imprisoned in Chesterfield. Webber was most associated with the Dover Baptist Church in Goochland and there a monument has been raised to him. Another worthy memorial is the church in Chesterfield which carries his name.
James Greenwood also was among those imprisoned in the Middlesex County jail at Urbanna. Faithful readers from Bruington Baptist Church in King and Queen County will recognize the name because of an historical marker which notes that he was arrested near the site of the church, “apprehended while actually engaged in proclaiming the gospel of peace.” He was pastor for some 40 years of Piscataway (later Mount Zion) Baptist Church in Essex.
“Father” John Courtney was known to everyone who lived in Richmond from the 1780s to the 1820s. For 40 years he was pastor of First Baptist Church there.
Lewis Lunsford, “the boy preacher,” also was a household name in the Northern Neck. He was the founding pastor of Morattico Baptist Church as well as pastor of Nomini and Wicomico Baptist churches. He preached far and wide; and in the struggle for religious liberty, he had his meetings interrupted by mob violence.
Henry Toler boldly preached in Westmoreland and tiny Nomini Baptist Church grew from 17 members to 875 in the early 1800s when it was declared “the most numerous church in Virginia.”
Theodorick Noel was a great revivalist who, in his time, baptized more persons than anyone else among the Virginia Baptists.
Iverson Lewis, mostly associated with the area around Gloucester, was given the glorious acknowledgement that he was “spreading the gospel all around him.”
Andrew Broaddus also saluted several of his own generation: William Straughton, president of the Baptist school called Columbian College and a leader in the first national Baptist body, the Triennial Convention; Robert Baylor Semple, who, simply put, was “Mr. Baptist” for young America; Luther Rice, the pioneer missionary who promoted the cause of missions among the Baptists. He also mentioned Richard Claybrook who followed Semple as pastor of Bruington. Claybrook was one of those Virginia Baptist ministers who were known as “a friend to every object that promised to be the means of doing good.”
If a generation is calculated as 20 years, the roll call stretches back fully 10 generations of men who surrendered themselves to the will of the Lord and the betterment of humankind. What a roll call! What a heritage! What an inspiration!
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He can be reached at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.