Joseph Reese was born in 1732 to a couple who had emigrated from Wales to Delware and eventually to South Carolina. Mr. & Mrs. Reese were among the first pioneers to settle in the area known as the Congarees.
Joseph was raised in the Anglican church, but by the grace of God he was born-again through the ministry of the Baptist evangelist Philip Mulkey. When Daniel Marshal started visiting the Congarees, preaching the gospel, he and Brother Reese started seeing others come to faith in Christ. In 1765 a church was formed with thirty-two converts. Three years later, on this day in 1768, at the invitation of the Congarees Baptist church, Oliver Hard and Evan Pugh assisted in the ordination of Pastor Reese. He served for many years as pastor of the congregation which ordained him. During the Revolutionary War, both he and one of his sons served in Goodwyn’s unit. Later he served in the House of Representatives.
Brother Joseph Reese was instrumental in starting many churches in the Carolinas, and hundreds came to know the Lord through his ministry. One of his most notable converts was Richard Furman, who became a powerful evangelist and educator, known throughout the country.
During the last years of his life, Pastor Reese suffered from several incapacitating maladies which forced him out of the pulpit. Undeterred, on several occasions he was carried in his bed three miles to the church house to hear the preaching of others. Then at the conclusion of the service he would sit up and exhort the congregation to carry on for the Lord. Joseph Reese died in his sixty-third year In Richland County, South Carolina.