John Gano was one of the Baptist pastors who fought for liberty in more ways than one. He was a chaplain in the Continental Army during the war for Independence, and prior to that he suffered for religious liberty while pastoring in North Carolina.
John Gano was ordained on this day in 1754 by the Hopewell Baptist Church in Western New Jersey. Soon thereafter, he married the daughter of the mayor of Elizabethtown, and the young couple traveled southward into the Carolinas. A number of people had recently moved from New Jersey and they called their new home “Jersey Settlement.’ At the time, North Carolina, like many places in North America, had an official, or state, church. And there was a law in place called the Vestry Act, which called for a tax from all its residents to support the clergy of the Church of England. The Baptists of the Carolinas and Virginia, like their New England brethren, opposed such laws, because they violated the principles of freedom. An invitation was sent abroad, and about seven hundred people met near Salisbury, probably at Jersey Settlement, to protest the Vestry Act. John Gano was chosen to be their spokesman. He and all the rest of the Baptist pastors in the colony at once became even more hated by the established church than they had been before. The government began to call the protesting group “a mob,” and the Governor sent his militia from the capital in New Bern to put down the mob. But by this time, Gano and others were beginning to convince their neighbors that when religious liberty falls, then there will fall every other kind of freedom in its wake. Despite the wrath of Governor Tryon, the Baptist brethren were protected.
Sadly, many of the people of Jersey Settlement returned to the peace of Jersey when Indian raids made remaining in the Carolinas dangerous. Eventually, John Gano left and joined the Scotch Plains Baptist Church which in turn granted authority for the establishment of the Gold Street Baptist Church, the first Baptist church in New York City. And, as they say, the rest is history.