Virginia Baptist Historical Society

Bill Jenkins once was described as “firm, fair and faithful.” Roland Byrd, the long-time Baptist campus minister at Virginia Tech, who was describing his former boss and mentor in ministry, said, “Bill encouraged us and helped us to do what…

Baptists have no founder. They have no certain month, day and year of beginning. It is risky at best to find the earliest tender roots of a people who have become one of the world's major religious denominations. Across the…

Ann Fitzgerald Brown's family was in the telephone business. Her great-grandfather put in a telephone from his house to his store and a telephone company was started. It was all about people getting connected with one another in the rural…

Robert Baylor Semple dipped his quill into an inkwell and wrote: “This church was stricken off from Hermitage ….” He was referring to Zoar Baptist Church; and in 1810 he devoted one long paragraph to the Middlesex County church in…

Earl Scott claimed that he was “no hero.” As proof, he cited that he won no medals. But he did have war stories. He liked to tell about his “window on the Battle of the Bulge.” It was a pilot's…

Last week's column told about my character portrayal of William E. Hatcher, the noted old-time preacher, when he recently had a return engagement in Baltimore where he served as a pastor in the 1860s. This week's column tells about a…

Faithful readers of this column know that my alter ego is William E. Hatcher, a noted 19th-century Baptist minister. They have followed my Hatcher portrayals and know his connections with everything Baptist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries….

Marjorie Lee Bailey was uniquely equipped with God-given gifts for one of the most challenging places of ministry. In 1966 she began service as director of religious activities and chaplain at the Virginia women's prison in Goochland. In 1977, in…

Southwest Virginia is big and bold and bodacious. Until the taming influence of Interstate 81, that ribbon of asphalt which makes straight the rough passages, Southwest Virginia was protected from the outside world by its own rough terrain. Even so,…

When he retires in October, Larry Holland will have completed over 41 years as pastor of Franklin Heights Baptist Church in Rocky Mount. He could joke that it would be impossible to tell his age simply based upon his four…

Donald Jordan Dunlap retired from his last pastorate, Freemason Street Baptist Church in Norfolk, in 1999; and four years later, in 2003, Don and Kay Dunlap left Tidewater to return to his native Christiansburg. Don and his brother, the late…

Eva Vest Easley of Bluefield was the hostess with the mostest. In her stately stone house, which guests aptly called “The Easley Mansion,” she and her husband, Tyler, entertained a parade of Baptist ministers, missionaries, denominational leaders, agency and institution…