Pioneer Preachers of Carolina
First we had the Episcopalians, who were
followed by the t^uakers. Then came the
Baptists. Moravians and Lutherans. The
Methodists were next in order.
Although
у.^Ыя
Dare wa*
born in 1585, il was not until
к
1072 that a Quaker, William
Edmund son, preached the first sermon
ever heanl in Colonial Carolina. It
was near the present town of Hertford.
I-atcr in the same year the famous
George Fox, another early Quaker,
visited the Colony and did evangelistic
work throughout the Albemarle. Per¬
secution of hi* sect during the reign
of Charles 1 1 had driven many of
that faith from England whence they
escaped and effected settlement along
the Chowan and where during the last
decade nf the seventeenth century they
constituted the only organized reli¬
gious body in the Colony. At that time
the Quakers had a majority on the
Colonial Council, a condition which
sorely irked Governor Henderson
Walker, who belonged to the Estab¬
lished or Episcopal church. That wily
churchman raked up an ancient stat¬
ute which had long fallen into dis¬
use, and which required
з11
civil offi¬
cers to take an oath of allegiance to
the Crown. Sending for the Quaker
members of the Council, he advised
them they must take the oath. Put as
the Quaker brethren refused to swear,
the Governor blandly declared their
seats vacant and proceeded to fill them
with members of hi- own faith. Sharp
practice for a churchman! The Quak¬
ers never rose to political power again.
Settlement in Guilford
Around 1750 the Quakers effected a
lodgment in central Carolina, renter¬
ing in N< w Garden, the present site
of Guilford College, from which lo¬
cality came such famous Carolinians
as Dolly Madison and Speaker Joseph
G. Cannon. The ancestors of Presi¬
dent Herbert Hoover Were Carolina
Quakers from Randolph County. The
sect lias always been noted for the high
quality of its Christian citizenship and
for the sober way of life required from
its adherents.
Second on the field of Colonial re¬
ligious sects was the Episcopal
Church. Its missionary organization,
the London Society for the Propaga¬
tion of the Gospel, undertook to evan¬
gelize the Colony, and as early as
17*»0 thnt body sent over a missionary.
«?/
II. C. LA WHENCE
Daniel Brett, but Governor Walker
declared that Brett behaved “in a
most horrid manner." while another
said “He was ye monster of ye age.”
Soon after him came Henry Gerrard.
who preached in Chowan and toward
the payment of whose modest stipend
such leaders ns Col. (later Governor)
Thomas Pollock contributed five
pounds — the first private contribu¬
tion ever made to religious work in
the Colony. But after their rector had
been with them hut three months, his
vestry were compelled to take notice
of “several scandalous reports” to the
effect that the parson had been engag¬
ing in “several debauched practices
which tend highly to the dishonor of
Almighty God and the scandal of the
Church.” Alas and alack! These early
brethren seem to have had a fondness
for “wine, woman and song." and to
have believed with Omar the Tent-
maker,
“A hook of verses underneath a how.
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and
thou,
Sitting beside . in the wilderness.
Ah ! wilderness were paradise enow.”
The Coming of Pettigrew
Following this, the Society sent
over ministers of a different type-, and
the Colony continued to be a mission¬
ary enterprise until 1775 when
Charles Pettigrew became the last
missionary and was later elected
(although never consecrated) as the
first Bishop of the Episcopal Church.
According to that authoritative
Baptist historian. Dr. George W. Pas¬
chal, the next sect to occupy the field
were the Rnptists. Paul Palmer found¬
ed its first church in 1727 in Camden
County. In that immediate vicinity is
Shiloh Church, which is the oldest
Baptist church in the state, having had
a continuous existence since 1727.
Most famous of Colonial Baptist
preachers " a * Shuhal Steam-,
who made his habitation on Sandy
Creek iu what is now Randolph
County, and hero he lived until his
death thirteen years later. He founded
the Sandy Creek Association, and
was the most famous preacher of his
day. exerting an influence which ex¬
tended throughout the Colony. He
proclaimed his cause with ardent zeal.
The decade which began with 1750
saw the greatest religious uplift in
Colonial Carolina, for it saw the firm
establishment of three great faiths—
the Presbyterians, the Moravians, and
the Lutherans.
The Moravians
The Moravians
опте
in 1753, when
a party headed by Bishop Spangen-
borg landed at Kdcnton and after ex¬
ploring the Colony to the crest of the
Blue Ridge, located in what is now
Forsyth and Surry counties, where
they purchased 100.000 acres of land
which they named “Wachovia” from
two German words meaning meadow
and stream. They fir-t located their
principal seat at Bethania. but soon
thereafter this was abandoned in favor
of the present city of Salem, at which
point they established the first Wom¬
an’s College in Carolina, its lineage
dating hack to 1772. They had been
driven to the Amorienn Colonies from
their native land, the Marquisnte of
Moravia iu Austria, and they were
most welcome in the Colony, where
their great industry, intelligence, so¬
briety and good order made them the
most influential religious community
in the western counties.
Campbell and McAden
The two founders of Presbyterian¬
ism in Carolina were James Camp¬
bell and Hugh McAden. Campbell
lodged in Cumberland where those of
his faith have an ancient church
named Barbecue. What an appropriate
name for a church, as is also Hog
Swamp down in Robeson ! But a far
greater pronchor was Hugh McAden,
whose great missionary journey in
1756 resulted in the establishment, of
a chain of Presbyterian churches from
Cape Fear to Catawba. After this
great tour, he settled in Duplin
Г пишу
where he ministered to several
congregations for a decade, then re-
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