Early Baptist History

INTRODUCTION OF BAPTIST SENTIMENTS INTO THE STATE.

In 1733, one or two Baptists arrived on the boat with James Oglethorpe: William Calvert, a lay preacher, and his wife, who might have shared his faith. Others soon followed, totaling probably fewer than 140 by 1770. In 1772 the first continuing Baptist church, Kiokee near Appling, was founded; twelve years later the first Baptist association in the state, the Georgia Association, appeared. As the new century opened, there were about 4,700 Baptists, gathered in 72 churches, with 3 district associations that included 90 percent of the total Baptist population. When the new nation was formed in 1776, about .52 percent of all Georgians were Baptist. In 1800 the figure stood at about 3 percent.[1]

THE first account we have of any Baptists in the province of Georgia was in the year 1757. Mr. Nicholas Bedgewood, who was employed in the capacity of agent to Mr. Whitfield's Orphan House, near Savannah, had several years previously been convinced of the truth of Baptist sentiments. In that year he went over to Charleston, and was baptized by Rev. Mr. Hart, the pastor of the Baptist church in that city. He was soon licensed to preach, and his ordination to the ministry took place in 1759. In 1763, he baptized several persons in and about the Orphan House,  one of whom was Mr. Benjamin Stirk, who afterwards became a minister of the gospel. To these persons, who were probably a branch of the Charleston church, Mr. Bedgewood administered the Lord's Supper, the first Baptist communion ever held in the province.

Mr. Stirk, having lost his wife while at the Orphan House, married the mother of the late Rev. Thomas Polhill, of Newington, in the vicinity of Goshen, eighteen miles above Savannah, to which place he removed in 1767.

He appears to have been a man of good learning, fine natural parts, and eminent for piety and zeal. As there was no Baptist church in Georgia, he united with the church at Euhaw, S. C. He soon began to preach, and set up places of meeting, at his own house, and at Tuckaseeking, twenty miles higher up the country, where there were a few Baptists, and who constituted a branch of the Euhaw church. But of the useful labors of this faithful servant of Christ, they were soon deprived, as he was called to his reward in the year 1770. This was the second bud of a Baptist church in the State; indeed, it is not certainly known that they ever became a regular church.

In the meantime, Mr. Botsford, a young licentiate of the Charleston church, while on a visit to the Euhaw church, received an invitation to come over and help this feeble and destitute branch. Encouraged by the mother church, and accompanied by the pastor, Rev. Mr. Pelot, he came and preached to them his first sermon, on the 27th of June, 1771. His labors being highly acceptable, he yielded to their solicitations, and remained with them for more than a year. But his anxious spirit would not permit him to remain in one place. He traveled extensively, preaching in all the surrounding country ; and towards the close of the next year, he went still higher up the river, and commenced an establishment at what was at first called New Savannah, but now Botsford's Old Meeting-house, about twenty-five or thirty miles below Augusta. Here he had the pleasure of seeing the work of the Lord prosper in his hands.

A little previous to Mr. Botsford's coming over to Tuckaseeking, Rev. Daniel Marshall, with other Baptist emigrants, arrived and settled on the Kiokee creeks, about twenty miles above Augusta. Mr. Marshall began forthwith to preach in the surrounding country. His principal establishment was on the Big Kiokee, and from this circumstance it received the style of the Kiokee Meeting-house. It was located on the site now occupied by the public buildings of Columbia county, called Appling.

Although Mr. Marshall was neither profoundly learned nor very eloquent as a preacher, yet he was fervent in spirit and indefatigable in labors, and the Lord working with him, he soon had the happiness of receiving and baptizing many new converts; these, together with the emigrant Baptists in that section, were constituted into a regular church in the year 1772.

 This Was The FirstBaptist Church Ever Constituted In Georgia. At this time, Mr. Daniel Marshall was the only ordained Baptist minister in the State; but, besides him, there were several zealous licentiates, i. e., Abraham Marshall, Sanders Walker, Solomon Thompson and Alexander Scott. By these the word of the Lord was proclaimed through all the upcountry, and the scattered sheep of Christ were gathered into this fold from the remotest frontiers. Thus the word of the Lord ran and was glorified, believers abundantly multiplied, and the church greatly enlarged.

By this time, Mr. Botsford had received ordination by the church in Charleston, that he might be more fully qualified to enter the large and interesting field of usefulness that lay before him. He had already visited Augusta, Kiokee and other places, which at that time lay along the frontiers of Georgia and South Carolina. He became acquainted with Mr. Marshall, and though there were at their first acquaintance certain slight differences between these ministers with respect to externals, Mr. Botsford being of what was then called the regular, and Mr. Marshall of the separate order, a more intimate acquaintance soon destroyed these distinctions, and those deveted servants of the Most High became perfectly united in their efforts to disseminate the truth and to build up the Redeemer's kingdom. Previously to the ordination of Mr. Botsford, Mr. Marshall baptized for him, but subsequently, he baptized himself many of the happy converts who believed under his ministrations at New Savannah and in the surrounding country; and in the year 1773 he had the additional satisfaction to see a church regularly constituted in that place.


This, Botsford's Church, Was TheSecond Church In The State. It is still a highly respectable body, and is a member of the Hephzibah Association.