University of Virginia Library

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ORIGINAL BAPTIST CHURCH RECORDS IN
THE VIRGINIA BAPTIST HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND

Among the fields of American historiography neglected by recent scholars none
has been more disregarded than that of church history. Although William H.
Allison's valuable Inventory of Unpublished Material for American Religious
History in Protestant Church Archives and Other Repositories was published a
quarter-century ago, the interest in economic trends and developments has been
predominant and only within the past few years have religious factors been
studied as a part of the broad sweep of social historians.[1] Because they have
shown that religious events and opinions are part and parcel of the complex
social pattern of our civilization, it is to be expected that students will turn increasingly
to the abundant source material of churches and other related organizations.

In continuing the policy of publishing in the present annual report another
list of original Virginia historical materials,[2] the archivist has welcomed the
opportunity of presenting the following manuscript church books in the Virginia
Baptist Historical Society. Founded in 1876, the Society has amassed a valuable
collection of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and manuscripts on the Baptists, with
emphasis on the Virginia churches; printed works on other denominations are
also well represented.[3] The priceless contents of the library are largely the
result of the efforts and enthusiasm of Dr. Charles H. Ryland (1836-1914),
founder of the Society, and his son, Dr. Garnett Ryland, of the University of
Richmond. The growing collection of more than 350 original church records
is unique, for no other repository of Baptist church manuscripts in America
contains so many of any one state. The difficulty of obtaining the minute books
of Old School ("anti-mission") or of Negro churches and their failure in many
cases to preserve them are reflected in the paucity of such records in the library
of the Society. Most of the minute books below include registers of members.

Other important Baptist collections are to be found in the New England Baptist
Library and the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society Archives, in the
Ford Building, Boston, Mass.; the former owns the famous Isaac Backus (17241806)
Collection. Crozer Theological Seminary, Chester, Pa., houses the valuable
library of the American Baptist Historical Society, founded in Philadelphia,
1853; its collection was begun anew after the disastrous fire of 1896 and

later moved to Chester.[4] The Samuel Colgate Baptist Historical Collection at
Colgate University, Hamilton, N. Y., includes among its manuscripts a few
church records of Alexandria, Va.[5] Extensive materials are located in the
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky., and in Brown University
Library, Providence, R. I. Smaller collections are those in Tremont Temple,
Boston; in Wake Forest College, North Carolina; and in Baylor University
Library, Waco, Texas.

Since there is no adequate history of Virginia Baptists, it may be well to
point out some of the earlier works worth consulting. Morgan Edwards' (17221795)
unpublished "Materials towards a History of the Baptists in the Province
of Virginia," 1772, is preserved in Crozer Theological Seminary. The Annual
Register of the Baptist Denomination in North-America . . . 1790
[Richmond, 1791] by John Asplund (d. 1807) includes a section on Virginia associations
and churches; he published two editions in 1794, one in Boston, the
other in Hanover, N. H.; and another edition in Hanover, 1796. Two accounts
of individual associations are valuable as early imprints as well as for their contents:
Lemuel Burkitt and Jesse Read, A Concise History of the Kehukee Baptist
Association, from Its Original Rise to the Present Time . . . (Halifax,
[N. C.], 1803)—chapters 14-15 on Virginia; and William Fristoe, A Concise
History of the Ketocton Baptist Association . . . (Staunton, Va., 1808). In
1810 Robert B. Semple published his authoritative A History of the Rise and
Progress of the Baptists in Virginia, . . . revised and extended by Rev. G.
W. Beale (Richmond, Va., 1894). The revision, however, consisting chiefly of
additional foot-notes, did not bring the work up to that date, but nothing better
is yet available. David Benedict's A General History of the Baptist Denomination
in America, and Other Parts of the World (2 volumes, Boston, 1813)—
volume II, chapters 3-9 on Virginia, has all the shortcomings of an antiquarian
work. A valuable biographical contribution is the Virginia Baptist Ministers
series, begun by James B. Taylor; he issued the first series in Richmond, 1837,
and the second in 1859. The next four were published by George B. Taylor
in Lynchburg respectively in 1912, 1913, 1915, and 1935. Finally, A History of
the Baptist Churches in the United States, by A. H. Newman (New York,
1894), volume 2 of the American Church History series, with considerable data
on Virginia leaves much to be desired throughout.[6]

In the following list the churches are arranged alphabetically by county under
each association. The date in parenthesis after the name of each association
and church is the year of founding. It has seemed advisable to include references
to files of printed association minutes and historical sketches in the
library of the Society. All such titles are in italics or within quotation marks
preceding italics, to distinguish them from manuscript records.