The few accounts that I think of when I think of the persecution of  
Baptist in Virginia is

The Traveling Church.  Elijah Craig and his brother Lewis Craig were  
prominent in the relocation of an entire Baptist congregation:

> On June 17th, 2007 while browsing Ancestry, I found the following  
> information about the traveling church:
>
> Forest Calico in his History of Garrard County, Ky says that Lewis  
> Craig and other local preachers organized the Upper Spotsylvania  
> Church of Culpeper and Orange Counties with Joseph Bledsoe as its  
> first pastor.  However, the church was unhappy under his ministry  
> and he resigned and came to Kentucky where he organized a Separate  
> Baptist church in 1783.  Many of the early preachers had been  
> greatly persecuted by other religious groups and many suffered  
> imprisonment for long periods.  Because of this the church grew, but  
> hearing of new settlements in Kentucky, they sent out to this new  
> country in 1779 Cap't Elijah and Lewis Craig to find a place where  
> they might worship in peace.  Glowing reports were brought back and  
> after two years of preparation, the entire church left Virginia in  
> the fall of 1781, reached Cumberland Gap on December 1st,  and  
> Gilbert's Creek on the second Lord's day in December.  It was here  
> that Joseph Bledsoe and William Miller Bledsoe organized

Brent Tartar had sent out an e-mail in 2007 to this mail list about  
this group:

Start with George W. Ranck, ""'The Travelling Church': An Account of the
Baptist Exodus from Virginia to Kentucky in 1781," Register of the
Kentucky Historical Society 79 (1981): 240-265.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
[log in to unmask]
\.....

"The Travelling Church" by George W Ranck

"The moving train included church members and their children, negro
slaves  and other emigrants (who for better protection, had attached
themselves  to an organized expedition),between five and six hundred
souls and was the  largest body of Virginians that ever set out for
Kentucky at one time."
It is estimated that there were 200 church members in the expedition.

marsha moses



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