Even though he was born on Christmas day, Stephen Gano wasn’t given the name of the eminent Welsh Baptist Christmas Evans; he was named after his great-grandfather, Etienne (Stephen) Gerneaux. Stephen’s father, John, was the pastor of the Gold Street Baptist Church in New York when he was born. The family had plans for Stephen to attend Brown college, when was then under the leadership of his uncle James Manning, and where he would continue to be exposed to gospel preaching. But that plan was interrupted by the War for American Independence, and instead Stephen learned the medical profession under another uncle, Dr. Stites. Eventually, with a medical degree in hand, he entered the army as a surgeon. Serving on an American ship, he was captured by the British and marooned on a Caribbean island. There he came within hours of death through disease and starvation. If he had died, he would have gone to hell; Stephen Gano was still a lost man. But a few years later the Lord saved his troubled soul, and on this day in 1786, Stephen was ordained to the ministry. Eventually he became the pastor of one of the largest churches in America. During Stephen’s thirty-six years in the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, the congregation grew from 165 members to 647, while sending members off to start five new churches.
The lives of John and Stephen Gano, along with their Huguenot ancestor Francios Gerneaux, are more fully explored in my book “Grace unto the Third and Fourth Generation.”
– Source: “This Day in Baptist History,” Cummins and Thompson